SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



^mam 




MARIA. 



SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



BY LAURENCE STERNE. 



ILLUSTRATED WITH NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD, BY BAST1N 
AND G. NICHOLLS: 



FROM ORIGINAL DRAWINGS BY JACQUE AND FUSSELL. 



LONDON: 
J. E. NICHOLLS, 51 WIGMORE STREET. 

MACHEN AND CO. DUBLIN. MENZIES, EDINBURGH. 
BIELEFELD, CARLSRUHE. 



■4-rl 



I r\ o i it 



48 65 55 

AUG -6 1942 



London : 

Vizetelly and Co. Printers and Engravers, 

13. r . Fleet Street. 




In offering to the public Sterne's inimitable master-piece, 
" The Sentimental Journey," under a form superior to 
any hitherto adopted, it has been deemed advisable, in order 
to render it still more worthy of attention, to prefix a short 
account of its justly celebrated author, with a few particulars 
respecting its characters, which, it is hoped, will not fail to be 
acceptable to the reader. 

Laurence Sterne was born at Clonmel, in the south 
of Ireland, on the 24th of November, 1713. His father was 
a lieutenant in the regiment of Handiside. The arms of the 
family (which were rather ancient) are described by Guillam, 
in his " Book of Heraldry," as, " Or, a chevron between three 
crosses flory, sable. The crest, on a wreath of his colours, a 
starling proper." The latter deserves notice as having fur- 
nished a subject for one of the finest stories in this work. 
Two events, recorded by Sterne himself in his memoirs, 
signalised his childhood. When about seven years of age, 
he fell through a mill-race while the mill was at work, and so 



miraculous was his escape from death considered, that hundreds 
of the common people nocked to see him. On another occa- 
sion, while at school at Halifax, the ceiling of the school-room 
having been newly white-washed, the ladder was left against 
the wall ; our hero saw it, mounted, and wrote in large capital 
letters " LAU. STERNE," for which he was severely chas- 
tised by the usher. His master was, however, much affected, 
and exclaimed, " Never shall that name be effaced ; that boy 
is a genius, and sure of preferment." He was not mistaken. 
In 1732, one of his cousins sent him to the University of 
Cambridge, where (about the commencement of 1740) he 
obtained the degree of M.A. His uncle, Jaques Sterne, pre- 
bendary of Durham and York, procured for him the living 
of Sutton. They were at that time on excellent terms, but 
quarrelled shortly after, on Sterne's refusing to write para- 
graphs for the newspapers. From that period, his uncle, who 
was a staunch Whig, strongly attached to his opinions, and 
desirous of imposing them on all who were in any way de- 
pendant on him, became his bitterest enemy. In 1741, Sterne 
married, and through his wife's means obtained the living of 
Stillingston ; for nearly twenty years he did duty at both 
places, still continuing his residence at Sutton, in the enjoyment 
of perfect health, and devoting his leisure to study, music, 
painting, and hunting. Previously to the year 1760, he had 
only published two very ordinary sermons, but at that period he 
went to London, where the appearance of the first and second 
volumes of " Tristram Shandy" soon assigned him an honour- 
able rank in the republic of letters. (It was then Lord Falcon- 



II] 



bridge presented him with the curacy of Coxwould.) This 
work was received with enthusiasm by the public ; but not so 
by the clergy, who anathematised the author. Shortly after, 
he published two volumes of sermons, under the ridiculous 
name of Yorick, the same which he had placed at the head of 
his novel, and which was no other than that of the jester, in- 
troduced by Shakspere in his " Hamlet." This inconsistency 
drew upon him fresh censures from the clergy, to which he 
replied only by publishing four more volumes of " Tristram 
Shandy." These were as successful as the preceding ones had 
been, but the seventh and eighth were but coolly received: 
the fashion was past and could not be revived. In 1762, 
Sterne set out for France, in the hope of re-establishing his 
health, which had been impaired much less by labour than 
by pleasure. He there left his wife and daughter, who had 
followed him, and continued his journey to Italy; but find- 
ing his health rapidly declining, he returned to York, and 
thence to London, about the end of 1767, when he published 
the last volume of " Tristram Shandy," and the first part of 
" The Sentimental Journey," which he had written during the 
preceding summer, at his favourite residence of Coxwould.* 
Beginning now to feel sensibly the approach of death, he, 
with all the solicitude of a tender parent, devoted his whole 
attention to the future happiness of his daughter; and the 
letters which he wrote at this period reflect so much honour 
on his heart and character, that it is to be regretted some 

* The remainder was published after his death. 



IV 



others, of a different tendency, have been allowed to meet the 
public eye. 

On the 18th of March, 1768, his exhausted frame sank, 
after a short struggle, at his lodgings in Bond Street. He 
was interred at the new burial-ground of St. George, Hanover 
Square, where a monument has since been erected to his 
memory by strangers. 

Sterne was in his person tall and thin, and had every 
appearance of being consumptive. Although his features bore 
the impress of the deep emotions of his soul, their expression 
was generally humorous. His temper was somewhat fickle 
and uneven, but his heart ever kind; and his purse, such 
as it was, never closed against a friend. Thus, although 
enjoying a good income, and the produce of his works, which 
was not inconsiderable, he left nothing behind him but debts, 
and a fame, which time, instead of diminishing, serves but to 
strengthen. 

Hisbestwork is, incomparably, "The Sentimental Journey." 

It may not, perhaps, be generally known that La Fleur, 
the faithful friend and companion of Yorick, is not an entirely 
imaginary character. That excellent man was born in Bur- 
gundy : from his infancy he felt an insatiable desire for tra- 
velling, and, at eight years of age, fled from the paternal roof, 
and set out to seek his fortune. Having led a wandering life 



two years, he enlisted as a soldier, remained a drummer in the 
French army six years, deserted in the dress of a peasant, 
arrived at Montreuil-sur-Mer, and was presented to Sterne 
covered with rags, but with an erect bearing, a piercing eye, 
and a ruddy complexion. To him are owing the following 
valuable particulars of the characters introduced by Sterne in 
his "Sentimental Journey." 

" The lady, noticed under the initial L , was the Mar- 
chioness de Lambert, to whom my master was indebted for a 
passport, the want of which began to render him seriously 
uneasy. 

" The dead ass is not a fiction. The poor man bathed in 
tears, was as simple and interesting as my master described 
him. I remember the circumstance perfectly. 

" Poor Maria's story is, alas ! but too true. When we 
met her, she was rolling on the ground like a child, and cover- 
ing her head with dust. My master accosted her, and raised 
her in his arms. She became calm, related her misfortune, 
and shed tears. My master sobbed. Maria then gently dis- 
engaged herself, and sang a hymn to the Virgin. My poor 
master covered his face with his hands, and conducted her to 
her cottage. He there found the old woman, and spoke to 
her gravely. I carried them provisions every day from the 
hotel ; and when my master quitted Moulines, he left the 
mother his blessing and a little money. I know not how 



much, but it is certain that he always gave more than he 
could afford; thus he often found himself short of money. 
He had ill calculated his expenses, having only reckoned those 
of travelling, without taking into the account the poor 
wretches he would have to relieve on the road. I remember 
that at almost every post, he would turn to me, with tears in 
his eyes, and say, ' These poor creatures afflict me much, my 
dear La Fleur. How can I relieve them ? ' 

" The only men in whom he did not appear to take any 
interest, were the monks; I remember his answer to many 
who came to beg of us : ' Father, I am engaged ; I am poor, 

like yourself.' " 




A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



FRANCE AND ITALY. 



— "They order," said I, " this matter better in France " 

— "You have been in France?" said my gentleman, 
turning quick upon me, with the most civil triumph in the 
world. — 

" Strange ! " quoth I, debating the matter with myself, 
" that one-and-twenty miles' sailing (for 't is absolutely no 
further from Dover to Calais) should give a man these rights 
— I '11 look into them : " so, giving up the argument, I went 
straight to my lodgings, put up half-a-dozen shirts and a black 
pair of silk breeches — " the coat I have on," said I, looking 
at the sleeve, "will do" — took a place in the Dover stage ; 
and the packet sailing at nine the next morning, by three I had 
got sat down to my dinner upon a fricasseed chicken so in- 
contestibly in France, that had I died that night of an indiges- 
tion, the whole world could not have suspended the effects 

A 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 






ill 




of the Droits d' aubaine :* my shirts, and black pair of silk 
breeches, portmanteau, and all, must have gone to the King of 
France : even the little picture which I have so long worn, and 
so often have told thee, Eliza, I would carry with me to my 
grave, would have been torn from my neck. — Ungenerous ! — 
to seize upon the wreck of an unwary passenger, whom your 
subjects had beckoned to their coast — by heaven ! sire, it is 
not well done ; and much does it grieve me, 't is the monarch 
of a people so civilised and courteous, and so renowned for 

sentiment and fine feelings, that I have to reason with 

But I have scarce set foot in your dominions 



* All the effects of strangers (Swiss and Scots excepted) dying in 
France, are seized by virtue of this law, though the heir be upon the 
spot. The profit of these contingencies being farmed, there is no redress. 
[This law has been abrogated many years. Ed.] 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 




CALAIS. 



When I had finished my dinner, and drank the King of France's 
health, to satisfy my mind that I bore him no spleen, but, on 
the contrary, high honour for the humanity of his temper, I 
rose up an inch taller for the accommodation. 

— " No," said I, " the Bourbon is by no means a cruel race : 
they may be misled, like other people ; but there is a mildness 
in their blood." As I acknowledged this, I felt a suffusion of 
a finer kind upon my cheek, more warm and friendly to man, 
than what Burgundy (at least, of two livres a bottle, which was 
such as I had been drinking) could have produced. 

— " Just God ! " said I, kicking my portmanteau aside, 
" what is there in this world's goods which should sharpen our 
spirits, and make so many kind-hearted brethren of us fall 
out so cruelly as we do by the way ? " 



4 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

When man is at peace with man, how much lighter than a 
feather is the heaviest of metals in his hand ! He pulls out his 
purse, and, holding it airily and uncompressed, looks round 
him as if he sought for an object to share it with. In doing 
this, I felt every vessel in my frame dilate — the arteries beat 
all cheerily together, — and every power which sustained life 
performed it with so little friction, that 'twould have con- 
founded the most physical precieuse in France : with all her 
materialism, she could scarce have called me a machine 

" I 'm confident," said I to myself, "I should have overset 
her creed." 

The accession of that idea carried nature, at that time, as 
high as she could go. — I was at peace with the world before, 
and this finished the treaty with myself 

— "Now, was I a King of France," cried I, "what a mo- 
ment for an orphan to have begged his father's portmanteau of 
me!" 

THE MONK. 

CALAIS. 

I had scarce uttered the words, when a poor monk of the order 
of St. Francis came into the room to beg something for his 
convent. No man cares to have his virtues the sport of con- 
tingencies — or one man may be generous as another man is 
puissant — sed non, quo ad hanc — or be it as it may — for there 
is no regular reasoning upon the ebbs and flows of our hu- 
mours : they may depend upon the same courses, for aught I 
know, which influence the tides themselves ; — 't would oft be 
no discredit to us to suppose it was so : I 'm sure, at least, for 
myself, that in many a case I should be more highly satisfied 
to have it said by the world, I had an affair with the moon, in 
which there was neither sin nor shame, than have it pass 
altogether as my own act and deed, wherein there was so much 
of both. 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 5 

— But be this as it may. The moment I cast my eyes 
upon him, I was predetermined not to give him a single sous ; 
and, accordingly, I put my purse into my pocket, buttoned it 
up, set myself a little more upon my centre, and advanced up 
gravely to him : there was something, I fear, forbidding in my 
look : I have his figure this moment before my eyes, and think 
there was that in it which deserved better. 

The monk, as I judged from the break in his tonsure (a 
few scattered white hairs upon his temples being all that re- 
mained of it), might be about seventy ; but from his eyes, and 
that sort of fire which was in them, which seemed more tem- 
pered by courtesy than years, could be no more than sixty ; — 
truth might lie between : — he was certainly sixty-five ; and 
the general air of his countenance, notwithstanding something 
seemed to have been planting wrinkles in it before their time, 
agreed to the account. 

It was one of those heads which Guido has often painted — 




G A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

mild, pale, penetrating — free from all commonplace ideas of fat, 
contented ignorance looking downwards upon the earth, — it 
looked forwards ; but looked as if it looked at something 
beyond this world. How one of his order came by it, heaven 
above, who let it fall upon a monk's shoulders, best knows ; 
but it would have suited a Brahmin ; and had I met it upon 
the plains of Hindostan, I had reverenced it. 

The rest of his outline may be given in a few strokes ; one 
might put it into the hands of any one to design, for 'twas 
neither elegant nor otherwise, but as character and expression 
made it so : it was a thin, spare form, something above the 
common size, if it lost not the distinction by a bend forward 
in the figure — but it was the attitude of entreaty ; and as it 
now stands presented to my imagination, it gained more than 
it lost by it. 

When he had entered the room three paces, he stood still ; 
and, laying his left hand upon his breast (a slender white staff 
with which he journeyed, being in his right), when I had got 
close up to him, he introduced himself with the little story of 
the wants of his convent, and the poverty of his order ; and 
did it with so simple a grace, and such an air of deprecation 
was there in the whole cast of his look and figure, I was be- 
witched not to have been struck with it. 

A better reason was, I had predetermined not to give him 
a single sous. 

THE MONK. 

CALAIS. 



a ■> 



T is very true," said I, replying to a cast upwards with his 
eyes, with which he had concluded his address ; — " 'T is very 
true — and heaven be their resource who have no other but the 
charity of the world ; the stock of which, I fear, is no way 
sufficient for the many great claims which are hourly made 
upon it." 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 7 

As I pronounced the words "great claims," he gave a 
slight glance with his eye downwards upon the sleeve of his 
tunic. — I felt the full force of the appeal. — " I acknowledge 
it," said I ; "a coarse habit, and that but once in three years, 
with meagre diet, are no great matters ; and the true point of 
pity is, as they can be earned in the world with so little in- 
dustry, that your order should wish to procure them by press- 




ing upon a fund which is the property of the lame, the blind, 
the aged, and the infirm ; the captive who lies down counting 
over and over again the days of his afflictions, languishes also 
for his share of it ; — and had you been of the order of mercy 
instead of the order of St. Francis, poor as I am," continued 
I, pointing at my portmanteau, "full cheerfully should it have 
been opened to you for the ransom of the unfortunate." — The 



8 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

monk made me a bow. — " But, of all others," resumed I, "the 
unfortunate of our own country surely have the first rights ; 
and I have left thousands in distress upon our own shore." — 
The monk gave a cordial wave with his head, as much as to 
say, " No doubt there is misery enough in every corner of the 
world, as well as within our convent." — " But we distinguish," 
said I, laying my hand upon the sleeve of his tunic, in return 
for his appeal, — " we distinguish, my good father, betwixt those 
who wish only to eat the bread of their own labour, and those 
who eat the bread of other people's, and have no other plan in 
life but to get through it in sloth and ignorance for the love 
of God." 

The poor Franciscan made no reply : a hectic of a moment 
passed across his cheek, but could not tarry ; — Nature seemed 
to have done with her resentments in him : — he shewed none ; 
but letting his staff fall within his arm, he pressed both his 
hands with resignation upon his breast, and retired. 



THE MONK. 

CALAIS. 

My heart smote me the moment he shut the door. — " Pshaw! " 
said I, with an air of carelessness, three several times, — but it 
would not do ; every ungracious syllable I had uttered crowded 
back into my imagination : I reflected, I had no right over the 
poor Franciscan but to deny him ; and that the punishment 
of that was enough to the disappointed without the addition 
of unkind language. — I considered his grey hairs: — his 
courteous figure seemed to re-enter, and gently ask me what 
injury he had done, me, and why I could use him thus : I 
would have given twenty livres for an advocate. — " I have be- 
haved very ill," said I within myself; " but I have only just 
set out upon my travels, and shall learn better manners as J 
get along." 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



iliiiii 




THE DESOBLIGEANTE. 

CALAIS. 

When a man is discontented with himself, it has one advan- 
tage however — that it puts him into an excellent frame of mind 
for making a bargain. Xow. there being no travelling through 
France and Italy without a chaise, and nature generally 
prompting us to the thing we are fittest for, I walked out 
into the coach-yard to buy or hire something of that kind to 
my purpose. An old dcsobligeante* in the furthest corner of 
the court, hit my fancy at first sight : so I instantly got into 
it, and finding it in tolerable harmony with my feelings, I 
ordered the waiter to call Monsieur Dessein, the master of the 
hotel ; but Monsieur Dessein being gone to vespers, and not 



* A chaise, so called in France from its holding but one person. 

B 



10 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



caring to face the Franciscan, whom I saw on the opposite 
side of the court in conference with a lady just arrived at the 
inn, I drew the taffeta curtain betwixt us, and, being deter- 
mined to write my journey, I took out my pen and ink, and 
wrote the preface to it in the desobligeante. 




THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY 



I 1 








IN THE DESOBLIGEANTE. 

It must have been observed by many a peri- 
patetic philosopher, that Nature has set up, 
by her own unquestionable authority, certain 
boundaries and fences to circumscribe the 
discontent of man : she has effected her pur- 
pose in the quietest and easiest manner, by 
laying him under almost insuperable obligations to work out 
his ease, and to sustain his sufferings at home. It is there 
only that she has provided him with the most suitable objects 
to partake of his happiness, and bear a part of that burden 
which, in all countries and ages, has ever been too heavy for 
one pair of shoulders. 'T is true, we are endued with an im- 
perfect power of spreading our happiness sometimes beyond 
her limits ; but 't is so ordered, that, from the want of lan- 
guages, connexions, and dependances, and from the differences 
in education, customs, and habits, we lie under so many 
impediments in communicating our sensations out of our own 
sphere, as often amount to a total impossibility. 

It will always follow from hence, that the balance of 
sentimental commerce is always against the expatriated ad- 



12 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

venturer : lie must buy what he has little occasion for, at 
their own price ; his conversation will seldom be taken in 
exchange for theirs without a large discount : and this, by- 
the-bye, eternally driving him into the hands of more equitable 
brokers for such conversations as he can find, it requires no 
great spirit of divination to guess at his party. 

This brings me to my point, and naturally leads me (if 
the see-saw of this desobligeante will but let me get on) into the 
efficient as well as final causes of travelling. 

Your idle people, that leave their native country, and go 
abroad for some reason or reasons which may-be derived from 
one of these general causes : — Infirmity of body ; Imbecility 
of mind ; or, Inevitable necessity. 

The two first include all those who travel by land or by 
water, labouring with pride, curiosity, vanity, or spleen, sub- 
divided and combined in infinitum. 

The third class includes the whole army of peregrine mar- 
tyrs ; more especially, those travellers who set out upon their 
travels with the benefit of the clergy, either as delinquents 
travelling under the direction of governors recommended by the 
magistrate, or young gentlemen transported by the cruelty of 
parents and guardians, and travelling under the direction of 
governors recommended by Oxford, Aberdeen, and Glasgow. 

There is a fourth class ; but their number is so small, that 
they would not deserve a distinction, were it not necessary in 
a work of this nature to observe the greatest precision and 
nicety, to avoid a confusion of character. And these men I 
speak of are such as cross the seas, and sojourn in a land of 
strangers, with a view of saving money for various reasons, 
and upon various pretences : but as they might also save 
themselves and others a great deal of unnecessary trouble by 
saving their money at home, and as their reasons for travelling 
are the least complex of any species of emigrants, I shall dis- 
tinguish these gentlemen by the name of Simple Travellers. 

Thus the whole circle of travellers may be reduced to the 
following heads : — 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY, 



13 













-. > 



sv^, ^«, s 



14 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

And last of all, if you please, the Sentimental Traveller 
(meaning thereby myself), who have travelled, and of which 
I am now sitting down to give an account, as much out of 
necessity, and the besoin de voyager, as any one in the class. 

I am well aware, at the same time, as both my travels and 
observations will be altogether of a different cast from any of 
my forerunners, that I might have insisted upon a whole nitch 
entirely to myself; but I should break in upon the confines of 
the Vain Traveller, in wishing to draw attention towards me, 
till I have some better grounds for it than the mere novelty of 
my vehicle. 

It is sufficient for my reader, if he has been a traveller 
himself, that with study and reflection hereupon, he may be 
able to determine his own place and rank in the catalogue : it 
will be one step towards knowing himself; as it is great odds 
but he retains some tincture and resemblance of what he 
imbibed or carried out to the present hour. 

The man who first transplanted the grape of Burgundy to 
the Cape of Good Hope (observe, he was a Dutchman) never 
dreamed of drinking the same wine at the Cape, that the 
same grape produced upon the French mountains — he was 
too phlegmatic for that ; — but, undoubtedly, he expected to 
drink some sort of vinous liquor ; but whether good, bad, or 
indifferent, he knew enough of this world to know that it did 
not depend upon his choice, but that what is generally called 
chance was to decide his success : however, he hoped for the 
best ; and in these hopes, by an intemperate confidence in the 
fortitude of his head, and the depth of his discretion, Mynheer 
might possibly overset his new vineyard, and by discovering 
his nakedness, become a laughing-stock to his people. 

Even so it fares with the Poor Traveller, sailing and post- 
ing through the politer kingdoms of the globe, in pursuit of 
knowledge and improvements. 

Knowledge and improvements are to be got by sailing and 
posting for that purpose ; but whether useful knowledge and 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. \o 

real improvements is all a lottery (and even where the adven- 
turer is successful, the acquired stock must be used with 
caution and sobriety to turn to any profit ; but as the chances 
run prodigiously the other way, both as to the acquisition and 
application), I am of opinion, that a man would act as wisely 
if he could prevail upon himself to live contented without 
foreign knowledge or foreign improvements, especially if he 
lives in a country that has no absolute want of either : and 
indeed, much grief of heart has it oft and many a time cost 
me, when 1 have observed how many a foul step the In- 
quisitive Traveller has measured to see sights, and look into 
discoveries ; all which, as Sancho Panza said to Don Quixote, 
they might have seen dryshod at home. It is an age so full of 
light, that there is scarce a country or corner of Europe whose 
beams are not crossed and interchanged with others. Know- 
ledge, in most of its branches, and in most affairs, is like 
music in an Italian street, whereof those may partake who pay 
nothing : but there is no nation under heaven — and God is 
my record, before whose tribunal I must one day come and 
give an account of this work, that I do not speak it vauntingly 
— but there is no nation under heaven abounding with more 
variety of learning ; where the sciences may be more fitly 
wooed, or more surely won, than here ; where art is encou- 
raged, and will so soon rise high ; where Nature, take her 
altogether, has so little to answer for ; and, to close all, where 
there is more wit and variety of character to feed the mind 
with. Where, then, my dear countrymen, are you going ? — 

" We are only looking at this chaise," said they. — " Your 
most obedient servant," said I, skipping out of it, and pulling 
off my hat. — " We were wondering," said one of them, who, 
I found, was an Inquisitive Traveller, " what could occasion 
its motion." " 'T was the agitation," said I, coolly, " of writing 
a preface." " I never heard," said the other, who was a 
Simple Traveller, " of a preface wrote in a desoblicjeante.' n 
" It would have been better," said I, " in a vis-a-vis, ." 



10 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



I J' 5 




— As an Englishman does not travel to see Englishmen, I 
retired to my room. 

CALAIS. 



I perceived that something darkened the passage more than 
myself, as I stepped along it to my room ; it was effectually 
Monsieur Dessein, the master of the hotel, who had just re- 
turned from vespers, and with his hat under his arm, was 
most complaisantly following me, to put me in mind of my 
wants. I had wrote myself pretty well out of conceit with 
the desobligeante ; and Monsieur Dessein speaking of it with a 
shrug, as if it would noways suit me, it immediately struck my 
fancy that it belonged to some Innocent Traveller, who, on 
his return home, had left it to Monsieur Dessein's honour to 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY 



17 



make the most of. Four months had elapsed since it had 
finished its career of Europe in the corner of Monsieur Des- 
sein's coach-yard ; and having sallied out from thence but a 
vampt-up business at the first, though it had been twice taken 
to pieces on Mount Sennis, it had not profited much by its 
adventures ; but by none so little as the standing so many 
months unpitied in the corner of Monsieur Dessein's coach- 
yard. Much indeed was not to be said for it — but something 




might ; and when a few words will rescue misery out of her 
distress, I hate the man who can be a churl of them. 

" Now, was I master of the hotel," said I, laying the point 
of my forefinger on Monsieur Dessein's breast, " I would in- 
evitably make a point of getting rid of this unfortunate deso- 
bligeante ; it stands swinging reproaches at you every time you 
pass by it." 

" Mon Dieu!" said Monsieur Dessein, "I have no inte- 
rest " " Except the interest," said I, "which men of a 

c 



18 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



certain turn of mind take, Monsieur Dessein, in their own 
sensations. I 'm persuaded, to a man who feels for others as 
well as for himself, every rainy night, disguise it as you will, 
must cast a damp upon your spirits. You suffer, Monsieur 
Dessein, as much as the machine." — 




I have always observed, when there is as much sour as 
sweet in a compliment, that an Englishman is eternally at a 
loss within himself whether to take it or let it alone : a French- 
man never is. — Monsieur Dessein made me a bow. 




THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



19 



" C" est bien vrai" said he. "But in this case, I should 
only exchange one disquietude for another, and with loss : 
figure to yourself, my dear sir, that in giving you a chaise 
which would fall to pieces before you had got half-way to 
Paris ; — figure to yourself, how much I should suffer in giving 
an ill impression of myself to a man of honour, and lying at 
the mercy, as I must do, d' un homme d' esprit." 

The dose was made up exactly after my own prescription : 
so I could not help taking it ; and returning Monsieur Dessein 
his bow, without more casuistry we walked towards his remise, 
to take a view of his magazine of chaises. 




20 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



IN THE STREET. 



CALAIS. 



It must needs be a hostile kind of world, when the buyer (if 
it be but of a sorry post-chaise) cannot go forth with the seller 
thereof into the street to terminate the difference betwixt 
them, but he instantly falls into the same frame of mind, and 
views his conventionist with the same sort of eye, as if he was 
going along with him to Hyde Park Corner to fight a duel. 
For my own part, being but a poor swordsman, and no way a 
match for Monsieur Dessein, I felt the rotation of all the 
movements within me to which the situation is incident. I 
looked at Monsieur Dessein through and through ; eyed him 
as he walked along in profile — then, en face — thought him 
like a Jew — then a Turk — disliked his wig — cursed him by 
my gods — wished him at the devil — 

— And is all this to be lighted up in the heart for a 
beggarly account of three or four louis d'ors, which is the 
most I can be overreached in ? — " Base passion ! " said I, 
turning myself about, as a man naturally does upon a sudden 
reverse of sentiment ; " Base, ungentle passion ! thy hand is 
against every man, and every man's hand against thee." — 
" Heaven forbid ! " said she, raising her hand up to her fore- 
head ; for I had turned full in front upon the lady whom I 
had seen in conversation with the monk : she had followed us 
unperceived. " Heaven forbid, indeed ! " said I, offering her 
my own — she had a black pair of silk gloves, open only at the 
thumb and two forefingers — so accepted it without reserve, 
and I led her up to the door of the remise. 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY 



21 




Monsieur Dessein had diabled the key above fifty times 
before he had found out he had come with a wrong one in his 
hand : we were as impatient as himself to have it opened, and 
so attentive to the obstacle, that I continued holding her hand 
almost without knowing it ; so that Monsieur Dessein left us 
together with her hand in mine, and with our faces turned 
towards the door of the remise, and said he would be back in 
five minutes. 

Now a colloquy of five minutes, in such a situation, is 
worth one of as many ages with your faces turned towards 
the street : in the latter case, 't is drawn from the objects and 
occurrences without ; when your eyes are fixed upon a dead 
blank, you draw purely from yourselves. A silence of a single 
moment upon Monsieur Dessein's leaving us, had been fatal 
to the situation — she had infallibly turned about — so I begun 
the conversation instantly. 



22 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

— But what were the temptations (as I write not to apo- 
logise for the weakness of my heart in this tour, but to give 
an account of them), shall be described with the same simpli- 
city with which I felt them. 



THE REMISE DOOR. 



When I told the reader that I did not care to get out of the 
desobligeante, because I saw the monk in close conference with 
a lady just arrived at the inn, I told him the truth, but I did 
not tell him the whole truth ; for I was full as much restrained 
by the appearance and figure of the lady he was talking to. 
Suspicion crossed my brain, and said, he was telling her what 

had passed : something jarred upon it within me 1 wished 

him at his convent. 

When the heart flies out before the understanding, it saves 
the judgment a world of pains — I was certain she was of a 
better order of beings — however, I thought no more of her, 
but went on and wrote my preface. 

The impression returned upon my encounter with her in 
the street : a guarded frankness with which she gave me her 
hand shewed, I thought, her good education and her good 
sense ; and, as I led her on, I felt a pleasurable ductility about 
her, which spread a calmness over all my spirits 

Good God ! how a man might lead such a creature 



as this round the world with him ! 

I had not yet seen her face, 'twas not material : for the 
drawing was instantly set about, and long before we had got to 
the door of the remise, Fancy had finished the whole head, 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 23 

and pleased herself as much with its fitting her goddess, as if 
she had dived into the Tiber for it : but thou art a seduced 
and a seducing slut ; and albeit thou cheatest us seven times a 
day with thy pictures and images, yet with so many charms 
dost thou do it, and thou deckest out thy pictures in the 
shapes of so many angels of light, 'tis a shame to break with 
thee. 

"When we had got to the door of the remise, she withdrew 
her hand from across her forehead, and let me see the original ; 
it was a face of about six-and-twenty, of a clear transparent 
brown, simply set off without rouge or powder — it was not 
critically handsome, but there was that in it, which, in the 
frame of mind I was in, attached me much more to it — it was 
interesting : I fancied it wore the characters of a widowed look, 
and in that state of its declension which had passed the two 
first paroxysms of sorrow, and was quietly beginning to reconr 
cile itself to its loss, but a thousand other distresses might have 
traced the same lines ; I wished to know what they had been, 
and was ready to enquire (had the same bon ton of conversa- 
tion permitted, as in the days of Esdras), " What aileth thee ? 
and why art thou disquieted ? and why is thy understanding 
troubled ?" In a word, I felt benevolence for her ; and re- 
solved some way or other to throw in my mite of courtesy, if 
not of service. 

Such were my temptations, and in this disposition to give 
way to them, was I left alone with the lady with her hand in 
mine, and with our faces both turned closer to the door of the 
remise than what was absolutely necessary. 



24 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



THE REMISE DOOR. 



CALAIS. 



" This certainly," fair lady ! said I, raising her hand up a little 
lightly as I began, " must be one of Fortune's whimsical 
doings ; to take two utter strangers by their hands, of different 
sexes, and perhaps from different corners of the globe, and in 
one moment place them together in such a cordial situation, as 
Friendship herself could scarce have achieved for them, had 
she projected it for a month." 

" And your reflection upon it shews how much, monsieur, 
she has embarrassed you by the adventure." 

When the situation is what we would wish, nothing is so 
ill-timed as to hint at the circumstances which make it so : 
" You thank Fortune," continued she ; " you had reason, the 
heart knew it, and was satisfied ; and who but an English 
philosopher would have sent notices of it to the brain to reverse 
the judgment ? " 

In saying this, she disengaged her hand with a look which 
I thought a sufficient commentary upon the text. 

It is a miserable picture which I am going to give of the 
weakness of my heart, by owning, that it suffered a pain, which 
worthier occasions could not have inflicted. I was mortified 
with the loss of her hand, and the manner in which I had lost 
it carried neither oil nor wine to the wound : I never felt the 
pain of a sheepish inferiority so miserably in my life. 

The triumphs of a true feminine heart are short upon these 
discomfitures. In a very few seconds, she laid her hand upon 



THROUGH FRANCE AXD ITALY. 25 

the cuff of my coat, in order to finish her reply ; so some way 
or other, God knows how, I regained my situation. 
— She had nothing to add. 

I forthwith began to model a different conversation for the 
lady, thinking from the spirit as well as moral of this, that I 
had been mistaken in her character ; but, upon turning her 
face towards me, the spirit which had animated the reply was 
fled, the muscles relaxed, and I beheld the same unprotected 
look of distress which first won me to her interest, melancholy ! 
to see such sprightliness the prey of sorrow — I pitied her from 
my soul ; and, though it may seem ridiculous enough to a torpid 
heart, I could have taken her into my arms, and cherished her, 
though it was in the open street, without blushing. 

The pulsations of the arteries along my fingers pressing 
across hers, told her what was passing within me : she looked 
down — a silence of some moments followed. 

I fear in this interval, I must have made some slight efforts 
towards a closer compression of her hand, from a subtle sensa- 
tion I felt in the palm of my own, not as if she was going to 
withdraw hers — but as if she thought about it ; and I had 
infallibly lost it a second time, had not instinct more than 
reason directed me to the last resource in these dangers — to 
hold it loosely, and in a manner as if I was every moment 
going to release it, of myself; so she let it continue, till 
Monsieur Dessein returned with the key ; and in the mean 
time I set myself to consider how I should undo the ill im- 
pressions which the poor monk's story, in case he had told it 
her, must have planted in her breast against me. 



26 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



-si In iirf 

«8 5 







THE SNUFF BOX. 



CALAIS. 



The good old monk was within six paces of us, as the idea of 
him crossed my mind, and was advancing towards us a little 
out of the line, as if uncertain whether he should break in upon 
us or no. He stopped, however, as soon as he came up to us, 
with a world of frankness : and having a horn snuff-box in his 
hand he presented it open to me. " You shall taste mine," 
said I, pulling out my box (which was a small tortoise one) 
and putting it into his hand. " 'Tis most excellent," said the 
monk ; " then do me the favour," I replied " to accept of the 
box and all, and when you take a pinch out of it, sometimes 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



27 



recollect it was the peace-offering of a man who once used you 
unkindly, but not from his heart." 

The poor monk blushed as red as scarlet. " Mon Dieu I " 
said he, pressing his hands together, " you never used me 
unkindly." " I should think," said the lady, " he is not likely." 
I blushed in my turn ; but from what movements, I leave to 
the few who feel to analyse. " Excuse me, madam," replied I ; 
" I treated him most unkindly ; and from no provocations." 
" Tis impossible," said the lady. "My God!" cried the 
monk, with a warmth of asseveration which seemed not to 
belong to him, "the fault was in me, and in the indiscretion of 
my zeal : " the lady opposed it, and I joined with her in main- 
taining it was impossible that a spirit so regulated as his, could 
give offence to any. 

I knew not that contention could be rendered so sweet and 
pleasurable a thing to the nerves as I then felt it. We re- 
mained silent, without any sensation of that foolish pain which 
takes place, when in such a circle you look for ten minutes in 
one another's faces without saying a word. Whilst this lasted, 




the monk rubbed his horn box upon the sleeve of his tunic ; 
and as soon as it had acquired a little air of brightness by the 
friction, he made me a low bow, and said 'twas too late to say 



28 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



whether it was the weakness or goodness of our tempers which 
involved us in this contest, but be it as he would, he begged 
we might exchange boxes. In saying this, he presented his to 
me with one hand, as he took mine from me in the other, and 
having kissed it, with a stream of good nature in his eyes he 
put it into his bosom, and took his leave. 




I guard this box, as I would the instrumental parts of my 
religion, to help my mind on to something better : in truth, I 
seldom go abroad without it ; and oft and many a time have I 
called up by it the courteous spirit of its owner to regulate my 
own, in the justlings of the world ; they had found full em- 
ployment for his, as I learned from his story, till about the 
forty-fifth year of his age, when upon some military services ill 
requited, and meeting at the same time with a disappointment 
in the tenderest of passions, he abandoned the sword and the 
sex together, and took sanctuary not so much in his convent as 
in himself. 

I feel a damp upon my spirits, as I am going to add, that 
in my last return through Calais, upon inquiring after Father 
Lorenzo, I heard that he had been dead near three months, 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



29 



and was buried, not in his convent, but, according to his desire, 
in a little cemetery belonging to it, about two leagues off; I 
had a strong desire to see where they had lain him — when, 
upon pulling out his little horn box, as I sat by his grave, and 
plucking up a nettle or two at the head of it, which had no 
business to grow there, they all struck together so forcibly 
upon my affections, that I burst into a flood of tears : but I am 
as weak as a woman ; and I beg the world not to smile, but 
pity me. 







30 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



THE REMISE DOOR. 



CALAIS, 



1 had never quitted the lady's hand all this time, and had 
held it so long, that it would have been indecent to have let it 
go, without first pressing it to my lips : the blood and spirits, 
which had suffered a revulsion from her, crowded back to her 
as I did it. 




Now the two travellers, who had spoke to me in the coach- 
yard, happening at that crisis, to be passing by, and observing 
our communications, naturally took it into their heads that we 
must be man and wife at least ; so, stopping as soon as they 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 31 

came up to the door of the remise, the one of thern, who was 
the Inquisitive Traveller, asked us, " If we set out for Paris 
the next morning?" "I could only answer for myself," 
I said ; and the lady added, she was for Amiens. " We 
dined there yesterday," said the Simple Traveller. " You go 
directly through the town," added the other, " in your road to 
Paris." I was going to return a thousand thanks for the in- 
telligence that Amiens was in the road to Paris, but upon 
pulling out my poor monk's little horn box to take a pinch of 
snuff, — I made them a quiet bow, and wishing them a good 
passage to Dover, they left us alone. 

" Now where would be the harm," said I to myself, " if I 
were to beg of this distressed lady to accept of half my chaise ? 
and what mighty mischief could ensue ? " 

Every dirty passion, and bad propensity in my nature took 
the alarm, as I stated the proposition. "It will oblige you 
to have a third horse," said Avarice, " which will put twenty 
livres out of your pocket." " You know not what she is," 
said Caution ; " or what scrapes the affair may draw you into," 
whispered Cowardice. 

"Depend upon it, Yorick!" said Discretion, "'twill be 
said you went off with a mistress, and came by assignation to 
Calais for that purpose." 

" You can never after," cried Hypocrisy aloud, " shew 
your face in the world;" "or rise," quoth Meanness, "in the 
church;" "or be any thing in it," said Pride, "but a lousy 
prebendary." 

" But 'tis a civil tiring," said I, and as I generally act 
from the first impulse, and therefore seldom listen to these 
cabals, which serve no purpose, that I know of, but to en- 
compass the heart with adamant, I turned instantly about to 
the lady. 

But she had glided off unperceived, as the cause was 
pleading, and had made ten or a dozen paces down the street, 
by the time I had made the determination ; so I set off after 



32 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



her with a long stride, to make her the proposal with the best 
address I was master of; but, observing she walked with her 
cheek half resting upon the palm of her hand — with the slow, 
short-measured step of thoughtfulness, and with her eyes, as 
she went step by step, fixed upon the ground, it struck me she 
was trying the same cause herself. " God help her ! " said I, 
" she has some mother-in-law, or tartufish aunt, or nonsensical 
old woman, to consult upon the occasion, as well as myself;" 
so not caring to interrupt the process, and deeming it more 
gallant to take her at discretion than by surprise, I faced 
about, and took a short turn or two before the door of the 
remise, whilst she walked musing on one side. 




THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 33 



IN THE STREET. 



Having, on the first sight of the lady, settled the affair in my 
fancy " that she was of the better order of beings ; " and then 
laid it down as a second axiom, as indisputable as the first, 
" that she was a widow, and wore a character of distress," I 
went no further : I got ground enough for the situation which 
pleased me, and had she remained close beside my elbow till 
midnight, I should have held true to my system, and con- 
sidered her only under that general idea. 

She had scarce got twenty paces distant from me, ere 
something within me called out for a more particular inquiry ; 
it brought on the idea of a further separation, I might possibly 
never see her more, the heart is for saving what it can ; and I 
wanted the traces through which my wishes might find their 
way to her, in case I should never rejoin her myself: in a 
word, I wished to know her name, her family, her condition ; 
and as I knew the place to which she was going, I wanted to 
know from whence she came : but there was no coming at all 
this intelligence ; a hundred little delicacies stood in the way. 
I formed a score different plans, there was no such thing as a 
man's asking her directly, the thing was impossible. 

A little French dcbonnaire captain, who came dancing- 
down the street, shewed me it was the easiest thing in the 
world ; for, popping in betwixt us, just as the lady was return- 
ing back to the door of the remise, he introduced himself to my 

E 



34 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

acquaintance, and, before he had well got announced, begged 
I would do him the honour to present him to the lady (I had 
not been presented myself) : so turning about to her, he did 
it just as well, by asking if she had come from Paris ? " No ; 
she was going that route," she said. " Vous rC etes pas de 
Londres ?''' " She was not," she replied. Then madam must 
have come through Flanders. " Apparemment vous etesFlam- 
mandeV said the French captain. The lady answered, she 
was. " Peut-etre de Lisle?" added he. She said, she was 
not of Lisle. "Nor Arras ?"— " Nor Cambray ? "— " Nor 
Ghent?" — "Nor Brussels?" She answered, she was of 
Brussels. 

He had had the honour, he said, to be at the bombardment 
of it last war ; that it was finely situated, pour cela, and full of 
noblesse when the Imperialists were driven out by the French 
(the lady made a slight curtsey) : so giving her an account of 
the affair, and of the share he had had in it, he begged the 
honour to know her name, — so made his bow. 

— " Et Madame a son Mari ? " said he, looking back when 
he had made two steps ; and without staying for an answer, 
danced down the street. 

Had I served seven years' apprenticeship to good breeding, 
I could not have done as much. 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



35 




THE REMISE. 



CALAIS. 



As the little French captain left us, Monsieur Dessein came 
up with up the key of the remise in his hand, and forthwith 
let us into his magazine of chaises. 

The first object which caught my eye as Monsieur Dessein 
opened the door of the remise, was another old, tattered deso- 
bligeante ; and notwithstanding it was the exact picture of that 
which had hit my fancy so much in the coach-yard but an hour 
before, the very sight of it stirred up a disagreeable sensation 
within me now : and I thought 'twas a churlish beast into 
whose heart the idea could first enter to construct such a 



36 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



machine ; nor had I much more charity for the man who could 
think of using it. 

I observed the lady was as little taken with it as myself ; 
so Monsieur Dessein led us on to a couple of chaises which 
stood abreast, telling us, as he recommended them, that they 
had been purchased by my Lords A. and B. to go the grand 
tour, but had gone no further than Paris, so were, in all re- 
spects, as good as new. They were too good ; so I passed on 
to a third, which stood behind, and forthwith began to chaffer 
for the price. " But 'twill scarce hold two," said I, opening 
the door, and getting in. " Have the goodness, madam," said 
Monsieur Dessein, offering his arm, " to step in," The lady 
hesitated half a second, and stepped in ; and the waiter that 
moment beckoning to speak to Monsieur Dessein, he shut the 
door of the chaise upon us, and left us. 




THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 37 



THE REMISE. 



CALAIS. 



" C" est bien comique, — 'tis very droll," said the lady, smiling, 
from the reflection that this was the second time we had been 
left together by a parcel of nonsensical contingencies. " C" est 
bien comique ," said she. 

— " There wants nothing," said I, "to make it so but 
the comic use which the gallantry of a Frenchman would put 
it to ; to make love the first moment, and an offer of his person 
the second." 

11 'T is their forte," replied the lady. 

" It is supposed so, at least ; and how it has come to pass," 
continued I, " I know not, but they have certainly got the 
credit of understanding more of love, and making it better, 
than any other nation upon earth ; but, for my own part, I 
think them arrant bunglers, and, in truth, the worst set of 
marksmen that ever tried Cupid's patience. 

— "To think of making love by sentiments ! 

" I should as soon think of making a genteel suit of clothes 
out of remnants : — and to do it — pop — at first sight, by de- 
claration — is submitting the offer and themselves with it, to be 
sifted with all their pours and contres by an unheated mind." 

The lady attended as if she expected I should go on. 

" Consider, then, madam," continued I, laying my hand 
upon hers, — 

" That grave people hate love for the name's sake ; 

" That selfish people hate it for their own ;, 

" Hypocrites for heaven's ; 



38 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



" And that all of us, both old and young, being ten times 
worse frightened than hurt by the very report " — 

" What a want of knowledge in this branch of commerce a 
man betrays, whoever lets the word come out of his lips, till 
an hour or two, at least, after the time that his silence upon it 
becomes tormenting. A course of small, quiet attentions, not 
so pointed as to alarm, nor so vague as to be misunderstood, 
with now-and-then a look of kindness, and little or nothing 
said upon it, leaves nature for your mistress, and she fashions 
it to her mind." — 

" Then I solemnly declare," said the lady, blushing, "you 
have been making love to me all this while." 




THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



.39 




S^J 



THE REMISE. 



CALAIS. 



Monsieur Dessein came back to let us out of the chaise, and 

acquaint the lady, the Count de L , her brother, was just 

arrived at the hotel. Though I had infinite good will for the 
lady, I cannot say that I rejoiced in my heart at the event, 
and could not help telling her so, " for it is fatal to a proposal, 
madam," said I, " that I was going to make to you." 

" You need not tell me what the proposal was," said she, 
laying her hand upon both mine, as she interrupted me. " A 
man, my good sir, has seldom an offer of kindness to make to 
a woman, but she has a presentiment of it some moments 
before." 

" Nature arms her with it," said I, " for immediate pre- 
servation." " But I think," said she, looking in my face, " I 



40 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



had no evil to apprehend, and to deal frankly with you, had de- 
termined to accept it. If I had (she stopped a moment), I 
believe your good will would have drawn a story from me, 
which would have made Pity the only dangerous thing in the 
journey." 

In saying this, she suffered me to kiss her hand twice, and 
with a look of sensibility mixed with concern, she got out of 
the chaise, and bid adieu. 




'!?B !/ 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 41 



IN THE STREET. 



CALAIS. 



I never finished a twelve guinea bargain so expeditiously in 
my life : my time seemed heavy, upon the loss of the lady, and 
knowing every moment of it would be as two, till I put 
myself into motion, I ordered post horses directly, and 
walked towards the hotel. 

" Lord ! " said I, hearing the town clock strike four, and 
recollecting that I had been little more than a single hour 
in Calais. 

— " What a large volume of adventures may be grasped 
within this little span of life by him who interests his heart in 
everything, and who, having eyes to see what time and chance 
are perpetually holding out to him as he journeyeth on his 
way, misses nothing that he can fairly lay his hands on. 

— "If this won't turn out something, another will, no 
matter, 'tis an essay upon human nature, I get my labour 
for my pains ; 'tis enough, the pleasure of the experiment has 
kept my senses and the best part of my blood awake, and laid 
the gross to sleep." 

I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and 
cry, 'tis all barren, and so it is ; and so is all the world to him 
who will not cultivate the fruits it offers. "I declare" said 
I, clapping my hands cheerly together, " that was I in a desert, 
I would find out wherewith in it to call forth my affections : 
If I could not do better, I would fasten them upon some sweet 
myrtle, or seek some melancholy cypress to connect myself to ; 
I would court their shade, and greet them kindly for their 

F 



42 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

protection ; I would cut my name upon them, and swear they 
were the loveliest trees throughout the desert : if their leaves 
withered, I would teach myself to mourn ; and, when they 
rejoiced, I would rejoice along with them." 

The learned Smelfungus travelled from Boulogne to Paris, 
from Paris to Rome, and so on ; but he set out with the spleen 
and jaundice, and every object he passed by was discoloured 
or distorted. He wrote an account of them, but 'twas nothing 
but the account of his miserable feelings. 

I met Smelfungus in the grand portico of the Pantheon ; 
he was just coming out of it. " 'Z 'is nothing but a huge 
cockpit,'" * said he : I wish you had said nothing worse of the 
Venus of Medicis, replied I ; for, in passing through Florence, 
I had heard he had fallen foul upon the goddess, and used her 
worse than a common * * * *, without the least provocation 
in nature. 

I popped upon Smelfungus again at Turin, in his return 
home, and a sad tale of sorrowful adventures had he to tell, 
" wherein he spoke of moving accidents by flood and field, and 
of the cannibals that each other eat — the Anthropophagi : " he 
has been slayed alive, and bedevilled, and used worse than St. 
Bartholomew, at every stage he had come to. 

" I'll tell it," cried Smelfungus, to the world ; — " You had 
better tell it," said I to your physician. 

Mundungus, with an immense fortune, made the whole 
tour ; going on from Rome to Naples, from Naples to Venice, 
from Venice to Vienna, to Dresden, to Berlin, without one 
generous connexion or pleasurable anecdote to tell of ; but he 
had travelled straight on, looking neither to his right hand nor 
his left, lest Love or Pity should seduce him out of his road. 

Peace be to them ! if it is to be found ; but heaven itself, 
was it possible to get there with such tempers, would want 
objects to give it ; every gentle spirit would come flying upon 

* Vide S 's Travels. 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY 



43 



the wings of love to hail their arrival ; nothing would the souls 
of Smelfungus and Mundungus hear of, but fresh anthems of 
joy, fresh raptures of love, and fresh congratulations of their 
common felicity. I heartily pity them ; they have brought up 
no faculties for this work ; and, was the happiest mansion in 
heaven to be allotted to Smelfungus and Mundungus, they 
would be so far from being happy, that the souls of Smel- 
fungus and Mundungus would do penance there to all eternity. 




&fc*-.T.2 



MONTREUIL. 



I had once lost my portmanteau from behind my chaise, and 
twice got out in the rain, and one of the times up to the knees 
in dirt, to help the postillion to tie it on, without being able to 
find out what was wanting ; nor was it till I got to Montreuil, 
upon the landlord's asking me if I wanted not a servant, that 
it occurred to me, that that was the very thing. 



44 - A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

" A servant ! that I do most sadly," quotli I. " Because, 
Monsieur," said the landlord, " there is a clever young fellow, 
who would be very proud of the honour to serve an English- 
man." " But why an English one, more than any other ?" 
" They are so generous," said the landlord. " I'll be shot if 
this is not a livre out of my pocket," quoth I, to myself, this 
very night. " But they have wherewithal to be so, Monsieur," 
added he. " Set down one livre more for that," quoth I. " It 
was but last night," said the landlord, " qu'un milord Anglois 
presentoit un ecu a la file de chambre." " Tant pis pour Made- 
moiselle Jeanneton," said I. 

Now Janatone being the landlord's daughter, and the land- 
lord supposing I was young in French, took the liberty to 
inform me, I should not have said tant pis, but tant mieux. 
" Tant mieux, toujours, monsieur,'" said he, "when there is any- 
thing to be got ; tant pis, when there is nothing." " It comes 
to the same thing," said I. " Pardonnez-moi," said the landlord. 

I cannot take a fitter opportunity to observe, once for all, 
that tant pis, and tant mieux, being two of the great hinges in 
French conversation, a stranger would do well to set himself 
right in the use of them, before he gets to Paris. 

A prompt French marquess, at our ambassador's table, de- 
manded of Mr. H — , if he was H — the poet. " No," said 
Mr. H — , mildly. " Tant pis," replied the marquess. 

"It is H — the historian," said another. " Tant mieux, " 
said the marquess ; and Mr H — , who is a man of an excellent 
heart, returned thanks for both. 

When the landlord had set me right in this matter, he 
called in La Fleur, which was the name of the young man he 
had spoke of, saying only first, that as for his talents he would 
presume to say nothing, Monsieur was the best judge what 
would suit him ; but for the fidelity of La Fleur, he would 
stand responsible in all he was worth. 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



45 



The landlord delivered this in a manner which instantly 
set my mind to the business I was upon, and La Fleur, who 
stood waiting without, in that breathless expectation which 
every son of nature of us have felt in our turns, came in. 






>wm 







46 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



MONTREUIL. 



I am apt to be taken with all kinds of people at first sight ; 
but never more so than when a poor devil comes to offer his 
service to so poor a devil as myself; and as J know this 
weakness, I always suffer my judgment to draw back some- 
thing on that very account, and this more or less, according to 
the mood I am in, and the case — and I may add, the gender 
too, — of the person I am to govern. 

When La Fleur entered the room, after every discount I 
could make for my soul, the genuine look and air of the fellow 
determined the matter at once in his favour ; so I hired him 
first, and then began to enquire what he could do. " But I 
shall find out his talents," quoth I, " as I want them ; besides, 
a Frenchman can do everything." 

Now poor La Fleur could do nothing in the world but 
beat a drum, and play a march or two upon the fife. J was 
determined to make his talents do : and can 't say my weak- 
ness was ever so insulted by my wisdom, as in the attempt. 

La Fleur had set out early in life, as gallantly as most 
Frenchmen do, with serving for a few years ; at the end of 
which, having satisfied the sentiment, and found, moreover, 
that the honour of beating a drum was likely to be its own 
reward, as it opened no further track of glory to him, he 
retired a ses terres, and lived comme il plaisoit a Dieu — that is 
to say, upon nothing. 

— " And so," quoth Wisdom, " you have hired a drummer 
to attend you in this tour of yours through France and Italy," 
" Pshaw i " said T, " and do not one half of our gentry go with 
a humdrum compagnon de voyage the same round, and have 






THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



47 



the piper and the devil and all to pay besides ? When a man 
can extricate himself with an equivoque in such an unequal 
match, he is not ill off. But you can do something else, La 
Fleur?" said I. " qu f oui ! he could make spatterdashes, 
and play a little upon the fiddle." "Bravo !" said Wisdom. 
" Why I play a bass myself," said I, " we shall do very well. 
You can shave, and dress a wig a little, La Fleur?" He had 
all the dispositions in the world. " It is enough for Heaven ! " 
said I, interrupting him, " and ought to be enough for me." So 
supper coming in, and having a frisky English spaniel on one 
side of my chair, and a French valet, with as much hilarity in 
his countenance as ever nature painted in one, on the other, 
I was satisfied to my heart's content with my empire ; and if 
monarchs knew what they would be at, they might be as 
satisfied as I was. 




48 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



MONTREUIL. 



As La Fleur went the whole tour of France and Italy with 
me, and will be often upon the stage, I must interest the 
reader a little further in his behalf, by saying, that I had 
never less reason to repent of the impulses which generally 
determine me, than in regard to this fellow ; he was a faithful, 
affectionate, simple soul as ever trudged after the heels of a 
philosopher ; and, notwithstanding his talents of drum-beating 
and spatterdash-making, which, though very good in them- 
selves, happened to be of no great service to me, yet I was 
hourly recompensed by the festivity of his temper ; it supplied 
all defects : — I had a constant resource in his looks in all diffi- 
culties and distresses of my own (I was going to have added 
of his too) ; but La Fleur was out of the reach of everything ; 
for, whether 'twas hunger or thirst, or cold or nakedness, or 
watchings, whatever stripes of ill luck La Fleur met with in 
our journeyings, there was no index in his physiognomy to 
point them out by, he was eternally the same ; so that if I 
am a piece of a philosopher, which Satan now and then puts it 
into my head I am, it always mortifies the pride of the conceit, 
by reflecting how much I owe to the complexional philosophy 
of this poor fellow, for shaming me into one of a better kind. 
With all this, La Fleur had a small cast of the coxcomb ; but 
he seemed at first sight to be more a coxcomb of nature than 
of art ; and before^ I had been three days in Paris with him, 
he seemed to be no coxcomb at all. 



THROUGH FRANt'E AND ITALY, 



49 




MONTREUIL. 



The next morning, La Fleur entering upon his employment, 
I delivered to him the key of my portmanteau, with an in- 
ventory of my half-a-dozen shirts, and a silk pair of breeches, 
and bid him fasten all upon the chaise, get the horses put to, 
and desire the landlord to come in with his bill. 

" Cest un garcon de bonne fortune" said the landlord, 
pointing through the window to half-a-dozen wenches who 
had got round about La Fleur, and were most kindly taking 
their leave of him, as the postillion was leading out the horses. 
La Fleur kissed all their hands round and round again ; and 
thrice he wiped his eyes, and thrice he promised he would 
bring them all pardons from Rome. 



50 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

— " The young fellow," said the landlord, " is beloved by 
all the town, and there is scarce a corner in Montreuil where 
the want of him will not be felt : but he has one misfortune in 
the world," continued he, "he is always in love." "I am 
heartily glad of it," said I, " 'twill save me the trouble every 
night of putting my breeches under my head." In saying this, 
I was making not so much La Fleur's eloge as my own, having 
been in love with one princess or another almost all my life ; 
and I hope I shall go on so till I die, being firmly persuaded, 
that if ever I do a mean action, it must be in some interval 
betwixt one passion and another : whilst this interregnum 
lasts, I always perceive my heart locked up, I can scarce find 
in it to give Misery a sixpence ; and therefore I always get out 
of it as fast as I can, and the moment I am rekindled, I am 
all generosity and good-will again ; and would do anything in 
the world, either for or witli any one, if they will but satisfy 
me there is no sin in it. 

— But in saying this, sure I am commending the passion, 
not myself. 



A FRAGMENT. 



— The town of Abdera, notwithstanding Democritus lived 
there, trying all the powers of irony and laughter to reclaim 
it, was the vilest and most profligate town in all Thrace. 
What for poisons, conspiracies, and assassinations, — libels, 
pasquinades, and tumults, — there was no going there by day, 
— 'twas worse by night. 

Now, when things were at the worst, it came to pass that 
the Andromeda of Euripides being represented at Abdera, the 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 51 

whole orchestra was delighted with it ; but of all the passages 
which delighted them, nothing operated more upon their 
imaginations than the tender strokes of nature which the poet 
had wrought up in that pathetic speech of Perseus, " O 
Cupid ! prince of gods and men, &c." Every man almost 
spoke pure iambics the next day, and talked of nothing but 
Perseus' pathetic address — " O Cupid ! prince of gods and 
men!" in every street of Abdera, in every house — " O Cupid! 
Cupid ! " in every mouth, like the natural notes of some sweet 
melody which drop from it, whether it will or no, — nothing 
but " Cupid ! Cupid ! prince of gods and men ! " The fire 
caught, and the whole city, like the heart of one man, opened 
itself to Love. 

Xo pharmacopolist could sell one grain of hellebore ; not a 
single armourer had a heart to forge one instrument of death ; 
Friendship and A'irtue met together, and kissed each other in 
the street ; the golden age returned, and hung over the town 
of Abdera ; every Abderite took his oaten pipe, and every 
Abderitish woman left her purple web, and chastely sat her 
down, and listened to the song. 

"'Twas only in the power," says the Fragment, " of the 
God whose empire extendeth from heaven to earth, and even 
to the depths of the sea, to have done this." 



52 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 




MONTREUIL. 



When all is ready, and every article is disputed and paid for 
in the inn, unless you are a little soured by the adventure, 
there is always a matter to compound at the door, before you 
can get into your chaise ; and that is with the sons and 
daughters of poverty, who surround you. Let no man say, 
" Let them go to the devil ; " 'tis a cruel journey to send a few 
miserables, and they have had sufferings enow without it : I 
always think it better to take a few sous out in my hand ; and 
I would counsel every Gentle Traveller to do so likewise : he 
need not be so exact in setting down his motives for giving 
them, — they will be registered elsewhere. 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



53 



For my own part, there is no man gives so little as I do ; for 
few that I know have so little to give : but as this was the first 
public act of my charity in France, I took the more notice of it. 

" A well-away ! " said I ; " I have but eight sous in the 
world," shewing them in my hand, " and there are eight poor 
men and eight poor women for 'em." 




A poor tattered soul, without a shirt on, instantly with- 
drew his claim, by retiring two steps out of the circle, and 
making a disqualifying bow on his part. Had the whole 
parterre cried out, " Place aux dames" with one voice, it 
would not have conveyed the sentiment of a deference for 
the sex with half the effect. 

Just Heaven ! for what wise reasons hast thou ordered it, 
that beggary and urbanity, which are at such variance in other 
countries, should find a way to be at unity in this ? 



54 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



— I insisted upon presenting him with a single sous, 
merely for his politesse. 

A poor little dwarfish brisk fellow, who stood over against 
me in the circle, putting something first under his arm, which 
had once been a hat, took his snuff-box out of his pocket, and 
generously offered a pinch on both sides of him : it was a gift 
of consequence, and modestly declined. The poor little fellow 
pressed it upon them with a nod of welcomeness. " Prenez- 
en — prenez" said he, looking another way ; so they each took 
a pinch. "Pity thy box should ever want one!" said I to 
myself ; so I put a couple of sous into it, taking a small pinch 
out of his box, to enhance their value, as I did it. He felt 
the weight of the second obligation more than that of the first ; 
'twas doing him an honour, — the other was only doing him a 
charity, — and he made me a bow down to the ground for it. 




THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



55 



— " Here ! " said I to an old soldier with one hand, who 
had been campaigned and worn out to death in the service, — 
here's a couple of sous for thee. " Vive le roi!" said the old 
soldier. 

I had then but three sous left : so I gave one simply pour 
I 'amour de Dieu, which was the footing on which it was begged. 
The poor woman had a dislocated hip ; so it could not be well 
upon any other motive. 




" Mon cher et tres-charitdble monsieur!" — "There's no 
opposing this," said I. 

" Milord Anglois /" — the very sound was worth the money 
— so I gave my last sous for it. But, in the eagerness of 
giving, I had overlooked a pauvre honteux, who had no one to 
ask a sous for him, and who, I believe, would have perished 
ere he could have asked one for himself. He stood by the 



56 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



chaise a little without the circle, and wiped a tear from a face 
which I thought had seen better days. " Good God ! " said I, 
" and I have not one single sous left to give him." " But 
you have a thousand ! " cried all the powers of nature stirring 
within me : so I gave him — no matter what — I am ashamed 
to say how much now, and was ashamed to think how little 
then : so, if the reader can form any conjecture of my dis- 
position, as these two fixed points are given him, he may 
judge within a livre or two what was the precise sum. 

I could afford nothing for the rest but " Dieu vous benisse." 
" Et le bon Dieu vous benisse encore" said the old soldier, the 
dwarf, &c. The pauvre honteux could say nothing : he pulled 
out a little handkerchief, and wiped his face as he turned 
away ; and I thought he thanked me more than they all. 




THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY 



ot 




THE BIDET. 



Having settled all these little matters, 1 got into my post- 
chaise with more ease than ever I got into a post-chaise in my 
life ; and La Fleur having one large jack-boot on the far side 
of a little bidet,* and another on this (for I count nothing of 
his legs), he cantered away before me as happy and as perpen- 
dicular as a prince. 

— But what is happiness ! what is grandeur in this painted 
scene of life ! A dead ass, before we had got a league, put a 
sudden stop to La Fleur's career ; his bidet would not pass 



* Post-horse. 
H 



58 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

by it ; a contention arose betwixt them, and the poor fellow 
was kicked out of his jack-boots the very first kick. 

La Fleur bore his fall like a French Christian, saying 
neither more nor less upon it than "Diable!" so presently 
got up, and came to the charge again astride his bidet, beating 
him up to it as he would have beat his drum. 

The bidet flew from one side of the road to the other — 
then back again ; then this way, then that way, and, in short, 
every way but by the dead ass : — La Fleur insisted upon the 
thing, and the bidet threw him. 

"What's the matter, La Fleur," said I, "with this bidet 
of thine?" " Monsieur" said he, " c'est un cheval le plus 
opinidtre du monde" " Nay, if he is a conceited beast, he must 
go his own way," replied I. So La Fleur got him off, and 
giving him a good sound lash, the bidet took me at my word, 
and away he scampered back to Montreuil. " Peste /" said 
La Fleur. 

It is not mal-a-propos to take notice here, that though La 
Fleur availed himself but of two different terms of exclama- 
tion in this encounter — namely, Diable ! and Peste ! there are 
nevertheless three in the French language : like the positive, 
comparative, and superlative, one or other of which serves for 
every unexpected throw of the dice in life. 

La Diable ! which is the first and positive degree, is gene- 
rally used upon ordinary emotions of the mind, where small 
things only fall out contrary to your expectations ; such as — 
the throwing one's doublets — La Fleur's being kicked off his 
horse, and so forth. Cuckoldom, for the same reason, is 
always — Le Diable ! 

But in cases where the cast has something provoking in it, 
as in that of the bidet's running away after, and leaving La 
Fleur aground in jack-boots — 'tis the second degree. 

Tis then Peste! 

And for the third — 

— But here my heart is wrung with pity and fellow-feeling, 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 59 

when I reflect what miseries must have been their lot, and how 
bitterly so refined a people must have smarted, to have forced 
them upon the use of it. — 

Grant me, O ye powers which touch the tongue with elo- 
quence in distress ! whatever is my cast, grant me but decent 
words to exclaim in, and I will give my nature way. 

But as these were not to be had in France, I resolved to 
take every ill just as it befel me, without any exclamation at all. 

La Fleur, who had made no such covenant with himself, 
followed the bidet with his eyes till it was got out of sight ; 
and then, you may imagine, if you please, with what word he 
closed the whole affair. 

As there was no hunting down a frightened horse in jack- 
boots, there remained no alternative but taking La Fleur 
either behind the chaise or into it. 

I preferred the latter ; and in half-an-hour we got to the 
post-house at Nampont. 



NAMPON T. 



THE DEAD ASS. 



"And this," said he, putting the remains of a crust into 

his wallet, — "And this should have been thy portion," said 
he, "hadst thou been alive to have shared it with me." I 
thought, by the accent, it had been an apostrophe to his child ; 
but 'twas to his ass, and to the very ass we had seen dead in 
the road,* which had occasioned La Fleur's misadventure. The 
man seemed to lament it much ; and it instantly brought into 
my mind Sancho's lamentation for his ; but he did it with 
more true touches of nature. 



CO 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 




The mourner was sitting upon a stone bench at the door, 
with the ass's pannel and its bridle on one side, which he took 
up from time to time — then laid them down — looked at them, 
and shook his head. He then took his crust of bread out of 
his wallet again, as if to eat it ; held it some time in his hand ; 
then laid it upon the bit of his ass's bridle, looked wistfully at 
the little arrangement he had made, and then gave a sigh. 

The simplicity of his grief drew numbers about him, and 
La Fleur amongst the rest, whilst the horses were getting 
ready : as I continued sitting in the post-chaise, I could see 
and hear over their heads. 

— He said he had come last from Spain, where he had 
been from the furthest borders of Franconia ; and had got so 
far on his return home, when his ass died. Every one seemed 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 61 

desirous to know what business could have taken so old and 
poor a man so far a journey from his own home. 

It had pleased Heaven, he said, to bless him with three 
sons, the finest lads in all German)* : but having, in one week, 
lost two of the eldest of them by the small pox, and the 
youngest falling ill of the same distemper, he was afraid of 
being bereft of them all ; and made a vow, if Heaven would 
not take him from him also, he would go in gratitude to 
St. Iago in Spain. 

When the mourner got thus for on his story, he stopped to 
pay nature his tribute, and wept bitterly. 

He said, Heaven had accepted the conditions ; and that he 
had set out from his cottage with this poor creature, which had 
been a patient partner of his journey ; that it had eat the 
same bread with him all the way, and was unto him as a friend. 

Everybody who stood about, heard the poor fellow with 
concern. La Fleur offered him money. The mourner said 
he did not want it : it was not the value of the ass, but the loss 
of him. The ass, he said, he was assured, loved him ; and 





62 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

upon this, told them a long story of a mischance upon their 
passage over the Pyrenean mountains, which had separated 
them from each other three days ; during which time the ass 
had sought him as much as he had sought the ass, and that 
they had scarce either eat or drank till they met. 

" Thou hast one comfort, friend," said I, " at least, in the 
loss of thy poor beast : I 'm sure thou hast been a merciful 
master to him." "Alas!" said the mourner, "I thought so 
when he was alive ; but now that he is dead, I think otherwise. 
I fear that the weight of myself and my afflictions together, 
have been too much for him — they have shortened the poor 
creature's days, and I fear I have them to answer for." 
" Shame on the world ! " said I to myself. " Did we but 
love each other as this poor soul loved his ass — 'twould be 
something." 



NAM PONT. 



THE POSTILLION. 



The concern which the poor fellow's story threw me into 
required some attention ; the postillion paid not the least to it, 
but set off upon the pave in a full gallop. 

The thirstiest soul in the most sandy desert of Arabia, 
could not have wished more for a cup of cold water than mine 
did for grave and quiet movements ; and I should have had a 
high opinion of the postillion had he but stolen off with me in 
something like a pensive pace : on the contrary, as the mourner 
finished his lamentation, the fellow gave an unfeeling lash to 
each of his beasts, and set off clattering like a thousand devils. 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 63 

I called to him as loud as I could, for Heaven's sake to go 
slower ; and the louder I called, the more unmercifully he 
galloped. " The deuce take him and his galloping too," said 
I : " he '11 go on tearing my nerves to pieces till he has worked 
me into a foolish passion, and then he '11 go slow that I may 
enjoy the sweets of it." 

The postillion managed the point to a miracle : by the time 
he had got to the foot of a steep hill about half a league from 
Nampont, he had put me out of temper with him — and then 
with myself, for being so. 

My case then required a different treatment ; and a good 
rattling gallop would have been of real service to me. 

— " Then, prithee, get on ; get on, my good lad," said I. 
The postillion pointed to the hill. — I then tried to return 

back to the story of the poor German and his ass ; but I had 
broke the clue, and could no more get into it again than the 
postillion could into a trot. 

— "The deuce go," said I, "with it all! Here am I 
sitting as candidly disposed to make the best of the worst as 
ever wight was, and all runs counter." 

There is one sweet lenitive, at least, for evils, which Nature 
holds out to us : so I took it kindly at her hands, and fell 
asleep ; and the first word which roused me was " Amiens." 

— " Bless me!" said I, rubbing my eyes, " this is the very 
town where my poor lady is to come." 




64 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



AMIENS. 

The words were scarce out of my mouth, when the Count 

de L — 's post-chaise, with his sister in it, drove hastily by : 

she had just time to make me a bow of recognition — and of 
that particular kind of it which told me she had not yet done 
with me. She was as good as her look ; for before I had 
quite finished my supper, her brother's servant came into the 
room with a billet, in which she said she had taken the liberty 
to charge me with a letter, which I was to present myself to 

Madame R the first morning I had nothing to do at 

Paris. There was only added, she was sorry (but from what 
penchant she had not considered) that she had been prevented 
telling me her story ; that she still owed it me ; and if my 
route should ever lay through Brussels, and I had not by then 

forgot the name of Madame de L , that Madame de L 

would be glad to discharge her obligation. 

" Then I will meet thee," said I, "fair spirit ! at Brussels : 
't is only returning from Italy through Germany to Holland, 
by the route of Flanders, home ; 't will scarce be ten posts 
out of my way ; but were it ten thousand, with what a moral 
delight will it crown my journey, in sharing in the sickening 
incidents of a tale of misery told to me by such a sufferer ! 
To see her weep ! and, though I cannot dry up the fountain of 
her tears, what an exquisite sensation is there still left, in 
wiping them away from off the cheeks of the first and fairest 
of women, as I'm sitting with my handkerchief in my hand 
in silence the whole night beside her ! " 

There was nothing wrong in the sentiment ; and yet I 
instantly reproached my heart with it, in the bitterest and most 
reprobate of expressions. 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 65 

It had ever, as I told the reader, been one of the singular 
blessings of my life, to be almost every hour of it miserably in 
love with some one : and my last flame happening to be blown 
out by a whiff of jealousy on the sudden turn of a corner, I 
had lighted it afresh at the pure taper of Eliza but about three 
months before ; swearing, as I did it, that it should last me 
through the whole journey. Why should I dissemble the 
matter ? I had sworn to her eternal fidelity : she had a right 
to my whole heart ; to divide my affections, was to lessen them ; 
to expose them, was to risk them : where there is risk there 
may be loss : — "And what wilt thou have, Yorick, to answer 
to a heart so full of trust and confidence, so good, so gentle, 
and unreproaching ! " 

" I will not go to Brussels," replied I, interrupting myself: 
but my imagination went on ; — I recalled her looks at that 
crisis of our separation when neither of us had power to say 
"Adieu!" I looked at the picture she had tied in a black 
riband about my neck, and blushed as I looked at it. I would 
have given the world to have kissed it, but was ashamed. 
"And shall this tender flower," said I, pressing it between my 
hands, " shall it be smitten to its very root — and smitten, 
Yorick, by thee, who hast promised to shelter it in thy breast? " 

" Eternal Fountain of Happiness ! " said I, kneeling down 
upon the ground, "be thou my witness — and every pure spirit 
which tastes it be my witness also — that I would not travel to 
Brussels unless Eliza went along with me, did the road lead 
me towards heaven ! " 

In transports of this kind, the heart, in spite of the under- 
standing, will always say too much. 



66 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 







THE LETTER. 



AMIENS. 



Fortune had not smiled upon La Fleur ; for lie had been 
unsuccessful in his feats of chivalry, and not one thing had 
offered to signalise his zeal for my service from the time that 
he entered into it, which was almost four-and-twenty hours. 
The poor soul burned with impatience ; and the Count de 
L 's servant coming with the letter being the first prac- 
ticable occasion which offered, La Fleur had laid hold of it, 
and, in order to do honour to his master, had taken him into 
a back parlour in the auberge, and treated him with a cup or 

two of the best wine in Picardy ; and the Count de L 's 

servant in return, and not to be behindhand in politeness with 
La Fleur, had taken him back with him to the count's hotel. 
La Fleur's prevenance (for there was a passport in his very 
looks) soon set every servant in the kitchen at ease with him ; 
and as a Frenchman, whatever be his talents, has no sort of 
prudery in shewing them, La Fleur, in less than five minutes, 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



67 



had pulled out his fife, and leading off the dance himself with 
the first note, set the fille de chambre, the mditre aV hotel, the 
cook, the scullion, and all the household, dogs and cats, besides 
an old monkey, a-dancing : I suppose there never was a merrier 
kitchen since the Flood. 







Madame de L , in passing from her brother's apart- 
ments to her own, hearing so much jollity below stairs, rung 
up her file de chambre to ask about it ; and hearing it was 
the English gentleman's servant who had set the whole house 
merry with his pipe, she ordered him up. 

As the poor fellow could not present himself empty, he 
had loaded himself in going up stairs with a thousand compli- 
ments to Madame de L on the part of his master ; added 

a long apocrypha of enquiries after Madame de L 's 

health ; told her that Monsieur his master was au desespoir 
for her re-establishment from the fatigues of her journey ; 
and, to close all, that Monsieur had received the letter which 
Madame had clone him the honour "And he has done me 



68 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



-, interrupting La Fleur, 



the honour," said Madame de L- 
" to send a billet in return ? " 

Madame de L had said this with such a tone of re- 
liance upon the fact, that La Fleur had not power to disappoint 
her expectations : he trembled for my honour ; and possibly 
might not altogether be unconcerned for his own, as a man 
capable of being attached to a master who could be wanting 
en egards vis-a-vis a" une femme! so that when Madame de 







L asked La Fleur if he had brought a letter, — " O 

qvLOuiV said La Fleur: so, laying down his hat upon the 
ground, and taking hold of the flap of his right side pocket 
with his left hand, he began to search for the letter with his 
right ; — then contrariwise — " Diable ! " — then sought every 
pocket, pocket by pocket, round, not forgetting his fob — 
" Peste /" — then La Fleur emptied them upon the floor — 
pulled out a dirty cravat — a handkerchief — comb — a whip lash 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 69 

— a nightcap ; — then gave a peep into his hat — " Quelle Hour- 
derie /" — He had left the letter upon the table in the auberge ; 
— he would run for it, and be back with it in three minutes. 

I had just finished my supper when La Fleur came in to 
give me an account of his adventure : he told me the whole 
story simply as it was ; and only added, that if Monsieur had 
forgot, par hasard, to answer Madame's letter, the arrangement 
gave him an opportunity to recover the faux pas ; and if not, 
that things were only as they were. 

Now, I was not altogether sure of my etiquette, whether I 
ought to have wrote or no ; but if I had, a devil himself 
could not have been angry : 't was but the officious zeal of a 
well-meaning creature for my honour ; and, however he might 
have mistook the road, or embarrassed me in so doing, his 
heart was in no fault : I was under no necessity to write ; 
and, what weighed more than all, he did not look as if he had 
done amiss. 

— "Tis all very well, La Fleur," said I. — 'T was suf- 
ficient. La Fleur flew out of the room like lightning, and 
returned with pen, ink, and paper, in his hand ; and, coming 
up to the table, laid them close before me with such a delight 
in his countenance, that I could not help taking up the pen. 

I began, and began again ; and though I had nothing to 
say, and that nothing might have been expressed in half-a- 
dozen lines, I made half-a-dozen different beginnings, and 
could no way please myself. 

In short, I was in no mood to write. 

La Fleur stepped out, and brought a little water in a glass 
to dilute my ink ; then fetched sand and sealing wax : it was 
all one ; I wrote, and blotted, and tore off, and burned, and 
wrote again. " Le diable Vemporte!" said I half to myself; 
" I cannot write this self-same letter," throwing down the pen 
despairingly as I said it. 

As soon as I had cast down my pen, La Fleur advanced 
with the most respectful carriage up to the table, and, making 



To 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



a thousand apologies for the liberty he was going to take, told 
me he had a letter in his pocket, wrote by a drummer in his 
regiment to a corporal's wife, which, he durst say, would suit 
the occasion. 

I had a mind to let the poor fellow have his humour. — 
" Then, prithee," said I, "let me see it." 

La Fleur instantly pulled out a little dirty pocket-book 
crammed full of small letters and billets-doux in a sad con- 
dition, and, laying it upon the table, and then untying the 
string which held them all together, run them over, one by 
one, till he came to the letter in question ~v^-"La voila!" said 
he, clapping his hands ; so, unfolding it first, he laid it open 
before me, and retired three steps from the table whilst I 
read it. 




THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 71 



THE LETTER. 

" Madame, 

" Je suis penetre de la douleur la plus vive, et 
reduit en meme temps au desespoir par ce retour imprevu du 
caporal qui rend notre entrevue de ce soir la chose du monde 
la plus impossible. 

" Mais vive la joie ! et toute la mienne sera de penser 
a vous. 

" L' amour n'est rien sans sentiment. 

" Et le sentiment est encore moins sans amour. 

" On dit qu'on ne doit jamais se desesperer. 

" On dit aussi que Monsieur le Caporal monte la garde 
mercredi : alors ce sera mon tour. 

" Chacun a son tour. 

" En attendant — Vive 1' amour ! et vive la bagatelle ! 

" Je suis, Madame, 
" Avec tous les sentimens les plus respectueux 
" et les plus tendres, tout a, vous, 

"JAQUES ROCQUE." 

It was but changing the corporal into the count, and saying 
nothing about mounting guard on Wednesday, and the letter 
was neither right nor wrong : so, to gratify the poor fellow, 
who stood trembling for my honour, his own, and the honour 
of his letter, I took the cream gently off it, and, whipping it 
up in my own way, I sealed it up, and sent him with it to 

Madame de L ; and the next morning we pursued our 

journey to Paris. 



72 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



PARIS. 



When a man can contest the point by dint of equipage, and 
carry all on floundering before him with half-a-dozen lackeys 
and a couple of cooks, 't is very well in such a place as Paris ; 
he may drive in at which end of a street he will. 

A poor prince who is weak in cavalry, and whose whole 
infantry does not exceed a single man, had best quit the field, 
and signalise himself in the cabinet, if he can get up into it : 
I say up into it, for there is no descending perpendicular 
amongst 'em with a " M e void! mes enfans" — "Here I am, 
whatever many may think." 

I own my first sensations, as soon as I was left solitary and 
alone in my own chamber in the hotel, were far from being so 
flattering as I had prefigured them. I walked up gravely to 
the window in my dusty black coat, and, looking through the 
glass, saw all the world in yellow, blue, and green, running at 
the ring of pleasure : the old with broken lances, and in 
helmets which had lost their vizards ; the young in armour 
bright, which shone like gold, beplumed with each gay feather 
of the east ; all, all tilting at it, like fascinated knights in 
tournaments of yore for fame and love. 

" Alas, poor Yorick ! " cried I, " what art thou doing here? 
On the very first onset of all this glittering clatter, thou art 
reduced to an atom : seek, seek some winding alley, with a 
tourniquet at the end of it, where chariot never rolled, or 
flambeau shot its rays ; there thou mayst solace thy soul in 
converse sweet with some kind griselte of a barber's wife, and 
get into such coteries ! 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



73 



— " May I perish if I do ! " said I, pulling out the letter 

which I had to present to Madame de R . " I '11 wait 

upon this lady the very first thing I do." So I called La 
Fleur to go seek me a barber directly, and come back and 
brush my coat. 



dP\ 




THE WIG. 



PARIS. 



When the barber came, he absolutely refused to have anything 
to do with my wig ; 't was either above or below his art : I 
had nothing to do but to take one ready made of his own 
recommendation. 

— " But I fear, friend," said I, " this buckle won't stand." 
"You may immerge it," replied he, "into the ocean, and it 
will stand." 



74 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

"What a great scale is everything upon in this city!" 
thought I. " The utmost stretch of an English periwig- 
maker's ideas could have gone no further than to have ' dipped 
it into a pail of water.' What difference! 'tis like time to 
eternity." 

I confess I do hate all cold conceptions, as I do the puny 
ideas which engender them ; and am generally so struck with 
the great works of nature, that, for my own part, if I could 
help it, I never would make a comparison less than a mountain 
at least. All that can be said against the French sublime in 
this instance of it is this, that the grandeur is more in the 
word, and less in the thing. No doubt, the ocean fills the 
mind with vast ideas ; but Paris being so far inland, it was 
not likely I should run post a hundred miles out of it to try 
the experiment : — the Parisian barber meant nothing. 

The pail of water standing beside the great deep, makes 
certainly but a sorry figure in speech ; but, 't will be said, it 
has one advantage : 't is in the next room, and the truth of the 
buckle may be tried in it, without more ado, in a single 
moment. 

In honest truth, and upon a more candid revision of the 
matter, the French expression professes more than it performs. 

I think I can see the precise and distinguishing marks of 
national characters more in these nonsensical minutice, than in 
the most important matters of state ; where great men of all 
nations talk and stalk so much alike, that I would not give 
ninepence to choose amongst them. 

I was so long in getting from under my barber's hands, 
that it was too late to think of going with my letter to Madame 

R that night ; but when a man is once dressed at all 

points for going out, his reflections turn to little account : so, 
taking down the name of the Hotel de Modene, where I lodged, 
I walked forth without any determination where to go : — " I 
shall consider of that," said I, "as I walk along." 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



75 




THE PULSE. 



PARIS. 



Hail, ye small sweet courtesies of life ! for smooth do ye make 
the road of it ; like grace and beauty, which beget inclinations 
to love at first sight : 't is ye who open this door, and let the 
stranger in. 

— " Pray, madam," said I, " have the goodness to tell me 
which way I must turn to go to the Opera Comique ?" " Most 
willingly, monsieur," said she, laying aside her work. 

I had given a cast with my eye into half-a-dozen shops as 
I came along, in search of a face not likely to be disordered by 
such an interruption : till, at last, this hitting my fancy, I had 
walked in. 

She was working a pair of ruffles as she sat in a low chair 
on the far-side of the shop, facing the door. 



76 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



" Tres-volontiers, most willingly," said she, laying her work 
down upon a chair next her, and rising up from the low chair 
she was sitting in, with so cheerful a movement and so cheerful 
a look, that had I been laying out fifty louis d 'ors with her, I 
should have said, " That woman is grateful." 



Jit 




" You must turn, monsieur," said she, going with me to 
the door of the shop, and pointing the way down the street I 
was to take ; " You must turn first to your left hand — mats 
prenez garde, there are two turns, and be so good as to take 
the second— then go down a little way, and you'll see a church ; 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 77 

and when you are past it, give yourself the trouble to turn 
directly to the right, and that will lead you to the foot of the 
Pont-Neuf, which you must cross, and there any one will do 
himself the pleasure to shew you." 

She repeated her instructions three times over to me, with 
the same good-natured patience the third time as the first ; — 
and, if tones and manners have a meaning, which certainly they 
have, unless to hearts which shut them out, she seemed really 
interested that I should not lose myself. 

I will not suppose it was the woman's beauty (notwith- 
standing she was the handsomest grisette, I think, I ever saw) 
which had much to do with the sense I had of her courtesy ; 
only I remember, when I told her how much I was obliged to 
her, that I looked very full in her eyes, and that I repeated 
my thanks as often as she had done her instructions. 

I had not got ten paces from the door, before I found I 
had forgot every tittle of what she had said : so, looking back, 
and seeing her still standing in the door of the shop, as if to 
look whether I went right or not, I returned back to ask her 
whether the first turn was to my right or left — for that I had 
absolutely forgot. "It is impossible ! " said she, half laugh- 
ing. " 'T is very possible," replied I, " when a man is 
thinking more of a woman than of her good advice." 

As this was the real truth, she took it, as every woman 
takes a matter of right, with a slight curtsey. 

— " Attendez /" said she, laying her hand upon my arm 
to detain me, whilst she called a lad out of the back shop to 
get ready a parcel of gloves. " I am just going to send him," 
said she, " with a packet into that quarter ; and, if you will 
have the complaisance to step in, it will be ready in a moment, 
and he shall attend you to the place." So I walked in with 
her to the far side of the shop ; aad taking up the ruffle in my 
hand which she laid upon the chair, as if I had a mind to sit, 
she sat down herself in her low chair, and I instantly sat 
myself down beside her. 



78 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



— " He will be ready, monsieur," said she, "in a moment." 
"And in that moment," replied I, "most willingly would I say 
something very civil to you for all these courtesies. Any one 
may do a casual act of good nature, but a continuation of them 
shews it is apart of the temperature : and certainly," added I, 
"if it is the same blood which comes from the heart which 
descends to the extremes (touching her wrist), I am sure you 
must have one of the best pulses of any woman in the world." 
" Feel it," said she, holding out her arm. So, laying down 
my hat, I took hold of her fingers in one hand, and applied the 
two forefingers of my others to the artery.- 

— Would to heaven ! my dear Eugenius, thou hadst 
passed by, and beheld me sitting in my black coat, and in my 
lackadaisical manner, counting the throbs of it, one by one, 
with as much true devotion as if I had been watching the 
critical ebb or flow of her fever : how wouldst thou have 
laughed and moralised upon my new profession ! — and thou 
shouldst have laughed and moralised on. Trust me, my dear 
Eugenius, I should have said, " There are worse occupations 
in this world than feeling a woman's pulse." " But a grisette's ! " 
thou wouldst have said ; "and in an open shop ! Yorick " 

— "So much the better: for when my views are direct, 
Eugenius, I care not if all the world saw me feel it." 




THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 79 



THE HUSBAND. 



PARIS. 



I had counted twenty pulsations, and was going on fast 
towards the fortieth, when her husband, coming unexpected 
from a back parlour into the shop, put me a little out of my 
reckoning. " 'T was nobody but her husband," she said : — so 
I began a fresh score. " Monsieur is so good," quoth she, as 
he passed by us, " as to give himself the trouble of feeling my 
pulse." The husband took off his hat, and, making me a 
bow, said I did him too much honour ; and having said that, 
he put on his hat, and walked out. 

" Good God ! " said I to myself, as he went out, " and can 
this man be the husband of this woman ? " 

Let it not torment the few who know what must have been 
the grounds of this exclamation, if I explain it to those who 
do not. 

In London, a shopkeeper and a shopkeeper's wife seem to 
be one bone and one flesh : in the several endowments of mind 
and body, sometimes the one, sometimes the other, has it, so 
as, in general, to be upon a par, and to tally with each other 
as nearly as man and wife need to do. 

In Paris, there are scarce two orders of beings more 
different : for the legislative and executive powers of the shop 
not resting in the husband, he seldom comes there : in some 
dark and dismal room behind, he sits commerceless in his 
thrum nightcap, the same rough son of Nature that Nature 
left him. 



80 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



The genius of a people, where nothing but the monarchy 
is salique, having ceded this department, with sundry others, 
totally to the women, by a continual higgling with customers 
of all ranks and sizes from morning to night, like so many 
rough pebbles shook along together in a bag, by amicable 
collisions they have worn down their asperities and sharp 
angles, and not only become round and smooth, but will re- 
ceive, some of them, a polish like a brilliant : — Monsieur le 
Mari is little better than the stone under your foot. 

— Surely, surely, man ! it is not good for thee to sit alone : 
thou wast made for social intercourse and gentle greetings ; 
and this improvement of our natures from it I appeal to as my 
evidence. 

— " And how does it beat, Monsieur ? " said she. " With 
all the benignity," said I, looking quietly in her eyes, " that I 
expected." She was going to say something civil in return, but 
the lad came into the shop with the gloves. " A propos" said 
I, " I want a couple of pairs myself." 




THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY 81 



THE GLOVES. 



The beautiful grisette rose up when I said this, and going behind 
the counter, reached down a parcel and untied it : I advanced 
to the side over against her : they were all too large. The 
beautiful grisette measured them one by one across my hand. — 
It would not alter their dimensions. She begged I would try 
a single pair, which seemed to be the least. She held it open ; 
my hand slipped into it at once. " It will not do," said I, 
shaking my head a little. " Xo," said she, doing the same 
thing. 

There are certain combined looks of simple subtlety, where 
whim, and sense, and seriousness, and nonsense are so blended, 
that all the languages of Babel set loose together could not 
express them ; they are communicated and caught so instan- 
taneously, that you can scarce say which party is the infecter. 
I leave it to your men of words to swell pages about it ; it is 
enough in the present to say again, the gloves would not do ; 
so folding our hands within our arms, we both lolled upon the 
counter ; it was narrow, and there was just room for the parcel 
to lay between us. 

The beautiful grisette looked sometimes at the gloves, then 
sideways to the window, then at the gloves, and then at me. 
I was not disposed to break silence — I followed her example : 
so I looked at the gloves, then to the window, then at the gloves, 
and then at her — and so on alternately. 

I found I lost considerably in every attack : she had a quick 
black eye, and shot through two such long and silken eyelashes 

L 



82 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



with such penetration, that she looked into my very heart and 
reins. — It may seem strange, but I could actually feel she did. 

" It is no matter," said I, taking up a couple of the pairs 
next me, and putting them into my pocket. 

I was sensible the beautiful grisette had not asked above a 
single livre above the price. I wished she had asked a livre 
more, and was puzzling my brains how to bring the matter 
about. " Do you think, my dear sir," said she, mistaking my 
embarrassment, " that I could ask a sous too much of a stranger, 
and of a stranger, whose politeness more than his want of gloves, 
has done me the honour to lay himself at my mercy? M'en 
croyez-vous capable?" " Faith ! not I," said I ; " and if you 
were, you are welcome." So, counting the money into her 
hand, and with a lower bow than one generally makes to a 
shopkeeper's wife, I went out, and her lad with his parcel fol- 
lowed me. 




THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY 



8-3 




THE TRANSLATION. 



PARIS. 



There was nobody in the box I was let into but a kindly 
old French officer. I love the character, not only because T 
honour the man whose manners are softened by a profession 
which makes bad men worse ; but that I once knew one — for 
he is no more — and why should I not rescue one page from 



84 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

violation by writing his name in it, and telling the world it was 
Captain Tobias Shandy, the dearest of my flock and friends, 
whose philanthropy I never think of, at this long distance from 
his death, but my eyes gush out with tears. For his sake, 
I have a predilection for the whole corps of veterans ; and so 
I strode over the two back rows of benches, and placed myself 
beside him. 

The old officer was reading attentively a small pamphlet (it 
might be the book of the opera) with a large pair of spectacles. 
As soon as I sat down, he took his spectacles off, and putting 
them into a shagreen case, returned them and the book into his 
pocket together. I half rose up, and made him a bow. 

Translate this into any civilised language in the world, the 
sense is this : 

" Here 's a poor stranger come into the box, he seems as if 
he knew nobody ; and is never likely, was he to be seven years 
in Paris, if every man he comes near keeps his spectacles upon 
his nose ; 't is shutting the door of conversation absolutely in 
his face, and using him worse than a German." 

The French officer might as well have said it all aloud : and 
if he had, I should in course have put the bow I made him into 
French too, and told him, " I was sensible of his attention, 
and returned him a thousand thanks for it." 

There is not a secret so aiding to the progress of sociality, 
as to get master of this short hand, and to be quick in rendering 
the several turns of looks and limbs, with all their inflexions 
and delineations, into plain words. For my own part, by long 
habitude, I do it so mechanically, that when I walk the streets 
of London, I go translating all the way ; and have more than 
once stood behind the circle, where not three words have been 
said, and have brought off twenty different dialogues with me, 
which I could have fairly wrote down and sworn to. 

I was going one evening to Martini's concert at Milan, and 
was just entering the door of the hall, when the Marquisina di 
F was coming out in a sort of a hurry : she was almost 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 80 

upon me before I saw her ; so I gave a spring to one side to 
let her pass : she had done the same, and on the same side too ; 
so we ran our heads together : she instantly got to the other 
side to get out, I was just as unfortunate as she had been, for 
I had sprung to that side, and opposed her passage again : we 
both flew together to the other side, and then back ; and so 
on : it was ridiculous ; we both blushed intolerably : so I did at 
last the thing I should have done at first — I stood stock still, 
and the Marquisina had no more difficulty. I had no power 
to go into the room,- till I had made her so much reparation, as 
to wait and follow her with my eye to the end of the passage. 
She looked back twice, and walked along it rather sideways, as 
if she would make room for any one coming up stairs to pass 
her. " No," said I, " that 's a vile translation: the Marquisina 
has a right to the best apology I can make her, and that open- 
ing is left for me to do it in ;'" so I ran and begged pardon for 
the embarrassment I had given her, saying it was my intention 
to have made her way. She answered, she was guided by the 
same intention towards me ; so we reciprocally thanked each 
other. She was at the top of the stairs, and seeing no cluchesbee 
near her, I begged to hand her to her coach ; so we went down 
the stairs, stopping at every third step to talk of the concert 
and the adventure. " Upon my word, madam," said I, when 
I had handed her in, " I made six different efforts to let you 
go out." " And I made six efforts," replied she, " to let you 
enter." " I wish to heaven you would make a seventh," said I. 
" With all my heart," said she, making room. Life is too short 
to be long about the forms of it ; so I instantly stepped in, and 
she carried me home with her. And what became of the con- 
cert ? St. Cecilia, who I suppose was at it, knows more than I. 
I will only add, that the connexion which arose out of the 
translation gave me more pleasure than any one I had the 
honour to make in Italy. 



86 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



THE DWARF. 



PARIS. 



I had never heard the remark made by any one in my life 
except by one ; and who that was, will probably come out in 
this chapter ; so that, being pretty much unprepossessed, there 
must have been grounds for what struck me the moment I 
cast my eyes over the parterre ; and that was, the unaccount- 
able sport of Nature in forming such numbers of dwarfs. No 
doubt she sports at certain times in almost every corner of the 
world ; but in Paris there is no end to her amusements. The 
goddess seems almost as merry as she is wise. 

As I carried my idea out of the Opera Comique with me, 
I measured every body I saw walking in the streets by it. 
Melancholy application ! especially where the size was ex- 
tremely little, the face extremely dark, the eyes quick, the 
nose long, the teeth white, the jaw prominent ; to see so many 
miserables, by force of accidents driven out of their own 
proper class into the very verge of another, which it gives me 
pain to write down ; every third man a pigmy : some by 
ricketty heads and hump backs ; others by bandy legs ; a 
third set arrested by the hand of Nature in the sixth or seventh 
years of their growth ; a fourth in their perfect and natural 
state, like dwarf apple trees : from the first rudiments and 
stamina of their existence, never meant to grow higher. 

A medical traveller might say, 't is owing to undue band- 
ages ; a splenetic one, to want of air ; and an inquisitive 
traveller, to fortify the system, may measure the height of 
their houses, the narrowness of their streets, and in how few 
feet square in the sixth and seventh stories such numbers of 






THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 87 

the Bourgeoisie eat and sleep together ; but I remember 
Mr. Shandy the elder, who accounted for nothing like any- 
body else, in speaking one evening of these matters, averred 
that children, like other animals, might be increased almost 
to any size, provided they came right into the world : but 
the misery was, the citizens of Paris were so cooped up, that 
they had not actually room enough to get them. " I do not 
call it getting anything," said he ; " 'tis getting nothing. Nay," 
continued he, rising in his argument, " 't is getting worse 
than nothing, when all you have got, after twenty or five-and- 
twenty years of the tenderest care and most nutritious aliment 
bestowed upon it, shall not at last be as high as my leg. Now, 
Mr. Shandy being very short, there could be nothing more 
said of it. 

As this is not a work of reasoning, I leave the solution as 
I found it, and content myself with the truth only of the 
remark, which is verified in every lane and by-lane of Paris. 
I was walking down that which leads from the Carrousel to the 
Palais Royal, and observing a little boy in some distress at the 
side of the gutter which ran down the middle of it, I took hold 
of his hand and helped him over. Upon turning up his face 
to look at him after, I perceived he was about forty. " Never 
mind," said I, " some good body will do as much for me when 
I am ninety." 

I feel some little principles within me which incline me to 
be merciful towards this poor blighted part of my species, who 
have neither size nor strength to get on in the world. I can- 
not bear to see one of them trod upon ; and had scarce got 
seated beside my old French officer, ere the disgust was 
exercised, by seeing the very thing happen under the box 
we sat in. 

At the end of the orchestra, and betwixt that and the first 
side box, there is a small esplanade left, where, when the house 
is full, numbers of all ranks take sanctuary. Though you stand, 
as in the parterre, you pay the same price as in the orchestra. 



88 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



A poor defenceless being of this order had got thrust somehow 
or other into this luckless place ; the night was hot, and he was 
surrounded by beings two feet and a-half higher than himself. 
The dwarf suffered inexpressibly on all sides ; but the thing 
which incommoded him most, was a tall corpulent German, 
near seven feet high, who stood directly betwixt him and all 
possibility of his seeing either the stage or the actors. The 
poor dwarf did all he could to get a peep at what was going 
forwards, by seeking for some little opening betwixt the 




German's arm and his body, trying first on one side, then on 
the other ; but the German stood square in the most unaccom- 
modating posture that can be imagined : the dwarf might as 
well have been placed at the bottom of the deepest draw-well 
in Paris ; so he civilly reached up his hand to the German's 
sleeve, and told him his distress. The German turned his 
head back, looked down upon him as Goliath did upon David, 
and unfeelingly resumed his posture. 

I was just then taking a pinch of snuff out of my monk's 
little horn-box. And how would thy meek and courteous 
spirit, my dear monk ! so tempered to bear and forbear ! how 
sweetly would it have lent an ear to this poor soul's complaint. 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



89 



The old French officer, seeing me lift up my eyes with an 
emotion, as I made the apostrophe, took the liberty to ask me 
what was the matter. I told him the story in three words ; 
and added, how inhuman it was. 

By this time, the dwarf was driven to extremes, and in his first 
transports, which are generally unreasonable, had told the German 
he would cut off his long queue with his knife. The German looked 
back coolly, and told him he was welcome, if he could reach it. 

An injury sharpened by an insult, be it to whom it will, 
makes every man of sentiment a party : I could have leaped 
out of the box to have redressed it. The old French officer 
did it with much less confusion ; for leaning a little over, and 
nodding to a sentinel, and pointing at the same time with his 
finger at the distress, the sentinel made his way to it. There 
was no occasion to tell the grievance, the thing told itself ; so 
thrusting back the German instantly with his musket, he took 
the poor dwarf by the hand, and placed him before him. " This 
is noble!" said I, clapping my hands together. "And yet 
you would not permit this," said the old officer, " in England." 

" In England, dear sir," said I, " we sit all at our ease" 

The old French officer would have set me at unity with 
myself, in case I had been at variance, by saying it was a bon 
mot ; and, as a bon mot is always worth something at Paris, he 
offered me a pinch of snuff. 






Hnnji .';:■' 



U ; --Plllf; 




90 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



THE ROSE. 



PARTS. 



It was now my turn to ask the old French officer, " What was 
the matter ? " for a cry of " Haut les mams, Monsieur V Abbe" 
re-echoed from a dozen different parts of the 'parterre, was as 
unintelligible to me, as my apostrophe to the monk had been 
to him. 

He told me it was some poor Abbe in one of the upper 
loges, who he supposed had got planted perdu behind a couple 
of grisettes in order to see the opera, and that the parterre es- 
pying him, were insisting upon his holding up both his hands 
during the representation. — " And can it be supposed," said I, 
" that an ecclesiastic would pick the grisettes'' pockets? " The 
old French officer smiled, and whispering in my ear, opened a 
door of knowledge which I had no idea of. 

" Good God ! " said I, turning pale with astonishment; " is 
it possible, that a people so smit with sentiment should at the 
same time be so unclean, and so unlike themselves — Quelle 
Grossierete ! " added I. 

The French officer told me it was an illiberal sarcasm at the 
church, which had begun in the theatre about the time the 
Tartuffe was given it by Moliere : but, like other remains of 
gothic manners, was declining. " Every nation," continued 
he, " have their refinements and grossieretes, in which they 
take the lead, and lose it of one another by turns : that he 
had been in most countries, but never in one where he found 
not some delicacies which others seemed to want. Le pour 
et le contre se trouvent en chaque nation ; there is a balance," 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 91 

said he, " of good and bad everywhere ; and nothing but the 
knowing it is so, can emancipate one-half of the world from 
the prepossession which it holds against the other : that the 
advantage of travel, as it regarded the savoir vivre, was by 
seeing a great deal both of men and manners : it taught us 
mutual toleration ; and mutual toleration," concluded he, 
making me a bow, " taught us mutual love." 

The old French officer delivered this with an air of such 
candour and good sense, as coincided with my first favourable 
impressions of his character. I thought I loved the man, but 
I fear I mistook the object ; 't was my own way of thinking ; 
the difference was, I could not have expressed it half so well. 

It is alike troublesome to both the rider and his beast, if 
the latter goes pricking up his ears, and starting all the way at 
every object which he never saw before. I have as little tor- 
ment of this kind as any creature alive ; and yet I honestly 
confess, that many a thing gave me pain, and that I blushed 
at many a word the first month, which I found inconsequent 
and perfectly innocent the second. 

Madame de Rambouillet, after an acquaintance of about 
six weeks with her, had done me the honour to take me in her 
coach about two leagues out of town. Of all women, Madame 
de Rambouillet is the most correct ; and I never wish to see 
one of more virtues and purity of heart. In our return back, 
Madame de Rambouillet desired me to pull the cord. I 
asked her if she wanted any thing : " Rien * * * * *," said 
Madame de Rambouillet. 

Grieve not, gentle traveller, to let Madame de Rambouillet 
* * * ; and ye, fair mystic nymphs ! go each one pluck your 
rose, and scatter them in your path — for Madame de Ram- 
bouillet did no more. I handed Madame de Rambouillet out 
of the coach, and had I been the priest of the chaste Castalia, 
I could not have served at her fountain with a more respectful 
decorum. 



92 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 




\,f "... mm 



THE FILLE DE CHAMBRE 



PARIS. 



What the old French officer had delivered upon travelling, 
bringing Polonins's advice to his son upon the same subject 
into my head, and that bringing in Hamlet, and Hamlet the 
rest of Shakespere's works, I stopped at the Quai de Conti in 
my return home, to purchase the whole set. 

The bookseller said he had not a set in the world. " Com- 
ment /" said I, taking one up out of a set which lay upon the 
counter betwixt us. He said they were sent him only to be 
got bound, and were to be sent back to Versailles in the morn- 
ing, to the Count dc B . 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



93 



spere 



-" And does the Count de B ," said I, " read Shak- 

? " " C" est un esprit fort" replied the bookseller ; " he 



loves English books, and what is more to his honour, monsieur, 
he loves the English too." " You speak this so civilly," said T, 
" that it is enough to oblige an Englishman to lay out a louis 
d' or or two at your shop." The bookseller made a bow, and 
was going to say something, when a young decent girl about 
twenty, who by her air and address seemed to be fille de 
chambre to some devout woman of fashion, came into the shop, 
and asked for " Les Egarements du Cceur et de V Esprit :" the 
bookseller gave her the book directly ; she pulled out a little 
green satin purse run round with a riband of the same colour, 
and putting her finger and thumb into it, she took out the 
money and paid for it. As I had nothing more to stay me in 
the shop, we both walked out at the door together. 




94 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

— " And what have you to do, my dear," said I, " with 
1 The Wanderings of the Heart,' who scarce know yet you 
have one ? nor, till love has first told you it, or some faithless 
shepherd has made it ache, canst thou ever be sure it is so." 
" Dieu m' en garde I" said the girl. " With reason," said I ; 
" for if it is a good one, 't is pity it should be stolen ; 't is a 
little treasure to thee, and gives a better air to your face, than 
if it was dressed out with pearls." 

The young girl listened with submissive attention, holding 
her satin purse by its riband in her hand all the time. " ' T is 
a very small one," said I, taking hold of the bottom of it (she 
held it towards me), " and there is very little in it, my dear," 
said I ; " but be but as good as thou art handsome, and heaven 
will fill it." I had a parcel of crowns in my hand to pay for 
Shakespere ; and, as she had let go the purse entirely, I put 
a single one in ; and, tying up the riband in a bow-knot, re- 
turned it to her. 

The young girl made me a more humble courtesy than a 
low one : 't was one of those quiet, thankful sinkings, where 
the spirit bows itself down — the body does no more than tell 
it. I never gave a girl a crown in my life which gave me half 
the pleasure. 

" My advice, my dear, would not have been worth a pin to 
you," said I, " if I had not given this along with it ; but now, 
when you see the crown, you '11 remember it : so do n't, my 
dear, lay it out in ribands." 

" Upon my word, sir," said the girl, earnestly, " I am inca- 
pable ;" in saying which, as is usual in little bargains of 
honour, she gave me her hand : " En verite, monsieur, je met- 
trai cet argent a part" said she. 

When a virtuous convention is made betwixt a man and a 
woman, it sanctifies their most private walks : so, notwith- 
standing it was dusky, yet, as both our roads lay the same 
way, we made no scruple of walking along the Quai de Conti 
together. 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 95 

She made me a second courtesy in setting off; and, before 
we had got twenty yards from the door, as if she had not done 
enough before, she made a sort of a little stop to tell me again 
— she thanked me. 

" It was a small tribute," I told her, " which I could not 
avoid paying to virtue, and would not be mistaken in the per- 
son I had been rendering it to for the world ; but I see inno- 
cence, my dear, in your face, and foul befall the man who ever 
lays a snare in its way." 

The girl seemed affected, some way or other, with what I 
said : she gave a low sigh : I found I was not empowered to 
enquire at all after it, so said nothing more till I got to the 
Rue de Nevers, where we were to part. 

— " But is this the way, my dear," said I, "to the Hotel 
de Modene ? " She told me it was, or that I might go by the 
Rue de Guenegaud, which was the next turn. " Then I'll go, 
my dear, by the Rue de Guenegaud," said I, "for two reasons ; 
first, I shall please myself, and next I shall give you the pro- 
tection of my company as far on your way as I can. The girl 
was sensible I was civil, and said she wished the Hotel de 
Modene was in the Rue de St. Pierre. " You live there ? " 

said I. She told me she was fille de chambre to Madame R . 

" Good God !" said I, " 'tis the very lady for whom I have 
brought a letter from Amiens." The girl told me that Madame 

R , she believed, expected a stranger with a letter, and 

was impatient to see him ; so I desired the girl to present my 

compliments to Madame R •, and say, I would certainly 

wait upon her in the morning. 

We stood still at the corner of the Rue de Nevers whilst 
this passed. We then stopped a moment whilst she disposed 
of her " Egarements du Cceur, tyc," more commodiously than 
carrying them in her hand — they were too volumes ; so I held 
the second for her whilst she put the first into her pocket ; and 
then she held her pocket, and I put in the other after it. 



96 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



' T is sweet to feel by what fine-spun threads our affections 
are drawn together. 

We set off afresh, and as she took her third step, the girl 
put her hand within my arm — I was just bidding her, but she 
did it of herself with that undeliberating simplicity, which 
shewed it was out of her head that she had never seen me be- 
fore. For my own part, I felt the conviction of consanguinity 
so strongly, that I could not help turning half round to look in 
her face, and see if I could trace out anything in it of a family 
likeness. " Tut ! " said I, " are we not all relations ? " 

When we arrived at the turning up of the Rue de Guene- 
gaud, I stopped to bid her adieu for good and all ; the girl 
would thank me again for my company and kindness. She 
bid me adieu twice. I repeated it as often ; and so cordial 
was the parting between us, that, had it happened any where 
else, I am not sure but I should have signed it with a kiss of 
charity, as warm and holy as an apostle. 

But in Paris, as none kiss each other but the men, I did 
what amounted to the same thing — I bid God bless her. 




THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 97 



THE PASSPORT. 



PARIS. 



When I got home to my hotel, La Fleur told me I had been 
enquired after by the Lieutenant de Police. " The deuce 
take it ! " said I, "I know the reason." It is time the reader 
should know it, for in the order of things in which it happened, 
it was omitted ; not that it was out of my head, but that had I 
told it then it might have been forgotten now ; and now is the 
time I want it. 

I had left London with so much precipitation, that it 
never entered my mind that we were at war with France ; and 
had reached Dover, and looked through my glass at the hills 
beyond Boulogne, before the idea presented itself; and with 
this in its train, that there was no getting there without a pass- 
port. Go but to the end of a street, I have a mortal aversion 
for returning back no wiser than I set out ; and as this was 
one of the greatest efforts I had ever made for knowledge, I 
could less bear the thoughts of it ; so hearing the Count de 

had hired the packet, I begged he would take me in his 

suite. The Count had some little knowledge of me, so made 
little or no difficulty ; only said his inclination to serve me 
could reach no further than Calais, as he was to return by way 
of Brussels to Paris ; however, when I had once passed there, 
I might get to Paris without interruption : but that in Paris I 
must make friends and shift for myself. " Let me get to Paris, 
Monsieur le Count," said I, " and I shall do very well." So 
I embarked, and never thought more of the matter. 



98 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



When La Fleur told me the Lieutenant de Police had been 
enquiring after me, the thing instantly occurred ; and by the 
time La Fleur had well told me, the master of the hotel came 
into my room to tell me the same thing, with this addition to 
it, that my passport had been particularly asked after : the 
master of the hotel concluded with saying, " He hoped I had 



one. 



Not I, faith!" said I. 




The master of the hotel retired three steps from me as 
an infected person, as I declared this, and poor La Fleur ad- 
vanced three steps towards me, and with that sort of move- 
ment which a good soul makes to succour a distressed one ; 
the fellow won my heart by it ; and from that single trait, I 
knew his character as perfectly, and could rely upon it as 
firmly, as if he had served me with fidelity for seven years. 

" Monseigneur ! " cried the master of the hotel ; but re- 
collecting himself as he made the exclamation, he instantly 
changed the tone of it , " If monsieur," said he, " has not a 
passport (apparemment), in all likelihood he has friends in Paris 
who can procure him one." " Not that I know of," quoth I, 



THROUGH FRANCE AXD ITALY. 99 

with an air of indifference. " Then certes" replied he, " you'll 
be sent to the Bastile or the Chatelet au moins." "Pooh!" 
said I, " the King of France is a good-natured soul ; he '11 
hurt nobody." " Cela n empeche pas" said he; " you will 
certainly be sent to the Bastile to-morrow morning." " But 
I 've taken your lodgings for a month," answered I, " and I '11 
not quit them a day before the time for all the Kings of 
France in the world." La Fleur whispered in my ear, " That 
nobody could oppose the King of France." 

" Pardi /" said my host, " ces Messieurs Anglois sont des 
gens tres-extraordinaires ; and having both said and sworn it, 
he went out." 



THE PASSPORT. 



THE HOTEL AT PARIS. 



I could not find in my heart to torture La Fleur's with a 
serious look upon the subject of my embarrassment, which 
was the reason I had treated it so cavalierly ; and to shew 
him how light it lay upon my mind, I dropped the subject 
entirely, and whilst he waited upon me at supper, talked to 
him with more than usual gaiety about Paris, and of the 
Opera Comique. La Fleur had been there himself, and had 
followed me through the streets as far as the bookseller's shop, 
but seeing me come out with the young file de chambre, and 
that we walked down the Quai de Conti together, La Fleur 
deemed it unnecessary to follow me a step further ; so making 
his own reflections upon it, he took a shorter cut, and got to 
the hotel in time to be informed of the affair of the police 
against my arrival. 



100 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



As soon as the honest creature had taken away, and gone 
down to sup himself, I then began to think a little seriously 
about my situation. 

— And here, 1 know, Eugenius, thou wilt smile at the re- 
membrance of a short dialogue which passed betwixt us the 
moment I was going to set out : — I must tell it here. 

Eugenius, knowing that I was as little subject to be over- 
burdened with money as thought, had drawn me aside to 




interrogate me how much I had taken care for. Upon telling 
him the exact sum, Eugenius shook his head, and said it 
would not do ; so pulled out his purse in order to empty it 
into mine. " I 've enough in conscience, Eugenius," said I. 
" Indeed, Yorick, you have not," replied Eugenius ; " I know 
France and Italy better than you." " But you do n't con- 
sider, Eugenius," said I, refusing his offer, " that before I 
have been three days in Paris, I shall take care to say or do 
something or other for which I shall get clapped up into the 
Bastile, and that I shall live there a couple of months entirely 
at the King of France's expense." " I beg pardon," said 
Eugenius drily ; " really I had forgot that resource." 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 101 

Now the event I treated gaily came seriously to my door. 

Is it folly, or nonchalance, or philosophy, or pertinacity ; 
or what is it in me, that, after all, when La Fleur had gone 
down stairs, and I was quite alone, I could not bring down 
my mind to think of it otherwise than I had then spoken of it 
to Eugenius. 

— And as for the Bastile ! the terror is in the word. 
" Make the most of it you can," said I, to myself, " the Bas- 
tile is but another word for a tower, and a tower is but another 
word for a house you can't get out of. Mercy on the gouty ! 
for they are in it twice a year. But with nine livres a day, 
and pen and ink, and paper and patience, albeit a man can't 
get out, he may do very well within — at least for a month or 
six weeks ; at the end of which, if he is a harmless fellow, his 
innocence appears, and he comes out a better and wiser man 
than he went in." 

I had some occasion (I forget what) to step into the court- 
yard as I settled this account ; and remember I walked down 
stairs in no small triumph with the conceit of my reasoning. 
" Beshrew the sombre pencil," said I, vauntingly, "for I envy 
not its powers, which paints the evils of life with so hard and 
deadly a colouring. The mind sits terrified at the objects 
she has magnified herself, and blackened ; reduce them to 
their proper size and hue, she overlooks them. 'Tis true," 
said I, correcting the proposition, " the Bastile is not an evil 
to be despised ; but strip it of its towers — fill up the fosse — 
unbarricade the doors — call it simply a confinement, and sup- 
pose 't is some tyrant of a distemper, and not of a man, which 
holds you in it — the evil vanishes, and you bear the other half 
without complaint. 

I was interrupted in the heyday of this soliloquy, with a 
voice which I took to be that of a child, which complained it 
could not get out. I looked up and down the passage, and 
seeing neither man, woman, nor child, I went out without 
farther attention. 



102 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNE 1 



In my return back through the passage, I heard the same 
words repeated twice over, and looking up, I saw it was a 
starling, hung in a little cage. " I can't get out, I can't get 
out," said the starling. 




I stood looking at the bird ; and to every person who 
came through the passage it ran fluttering to the side towards 
which they approached it, with the same lamentation of its 
captivity. " I can't get out," said the starling. " God help 
thee ! " said I, " but I '11 help thee out, cost what it will ;" so 
I turned about the cage to get to the door ; it was twisted 
and double twisted so fast with wire, there was no getting it 
open without pulling the cage to pieces. I took both hands 
to it. 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 103 

The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his 
deliverance, and thrusting his head through the trellis 
pressed his breast against it as if impatient. " I fear, poor 
creature," said I, "I cannot set thee at liberty." " No," 
said the starling; " I can't get out, I can't get out," said the 
starling. 

I vow I never had my affections more tenderly awakened ; 
nor do I remember an incident in my life, where the dissi- 
pated spirits, to which my reason had been a bubble, were so 
suddenly called home. Mechanical as the notes were, yet so 
true in tune to nature were they chanted, that in one moment 
they overthrew all my systematic reasonings upon the Bastile ; 
and I heavily walked up stairs, unsaying every word I had 
said in going down them. 

" Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery ! " said I, 
" still thou art a bitter draught! and though thousands in all 
ages have been made to drink thee, thou art no less bitter on 
that account. 'T is thou, thrice sweet and gracious goddess," 
addressing myself to Liberty, " whom all in public or in pri- 
vate worship, whose taste is grateful, and ever will be so, till 
Nature herself shall change. No tint of words can spot thy 
snowy mantle, or chemic power turn thy sceptre into iron ; 
with thee to smile upon him as he eats his crust, the swain is 
happier than his monarch, from whose court thou art exiled. 
Gracious Heaven ! " cried I, kneeling down upon the last step 
but one in my ascent, " grant me but health, thou great 
Bestower of it, and give me but this fair goddess as my com- 
panion, and shower down thy mitres, if it seems good unto 
thy divine providence, upon those heads which are aching for 
them." 



101 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 




THE CAPTIVE. 



PARIS. 



The bird in his cage pursued me into my room. I sat down 
close to my table, and leaning my head upon my hand, I 
began to figure to myself the miseries of confinement. I was 
in a right frame for it, and so I gave full scope to my ima- 
gination. 

I was going to begin with the millions of my fellow- 
creatures, born to no inheritance but slavery ; but finding, 
however affecting the picture was, that I could not bring it 
near me, and that the multitudes of sad groups in it did but 
distract me, 

— I took a single captive, and having first shut him up in 
his dungeon, I then looked through the twilight of his grated 
door to take his picture. 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 105 

I beheld his body half wasted away with long expectation 
and confinement, and felt what kind of sickness of heart it is 
which arises from hope deferred. Upon looking nearer, I saw 
him pale and feverish : in thirty years, the western breeze had 
not once fanned his blood ; he had seen no sun, no moon, in 
all that time, nor had the voice of friend or kinsman breathed 
through his lattice ! — his children 

But here my heart began to bleed, and I was forced to go 
on with another part of the portrait. 

He was sitting upon the ground, upon a little straw in the 
furthest corner of his dungeon, which was alternately his chair 
and bed : a little calendar of small sticks was laid at the head, 
notched all over with the dismal days and nights he had 
passed there : he had one of these little sticks in his hand, and 
with a rusty nail he was etching another day of misery to add 
to the heap. As I darkened the little light he had, he lifted 
up a hopeless eye towards the door, then cast it down, shook 
his head, and went on with his work of affliction. I heard his 
chains upon his legs, as he turned his body to lay his little 
stick upon the bundle. He gave a deep sigh. — I saw the iron 
enter into his soul ! — I burst into tears. — I could not sustain 
the picture of confinement which my fancy had drawn. — I 
started up from my chair, and calling La Fleur, I bid him be- 
speak me a remise, and have it ready at the door of the hotel 
by nine in the morning. 

" I '11 go directly," said I to myself, " to Monsieur le 
Due de Choiseul." 

La Fleur would have put me to bed ; but, not willing he 
should see anything upon my cheek, which would cost the 
honest fellow a heart-ache, I told him I would go to bed my- 
self, and bid him do the same. 



106 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 




THE STARLING 



ROAD TO VERSAILLES. 



I got into my remise the hour I proposed ; La Fleur got up 
behind, and I bid the coachman make the best of his way to 
Versailles. 

As there was nothing in this road, or rather nothing which 
I look for in travelling, I cannot fill up the blank better than 
with a short history of this self-same bird, which became the 
subject of the last chapter. 

Whilst the Honourable Mr. was waiting for a wind at 

Dover, it had been caught upon the cliffs, before it could well 
fly, by an English lad who was his groom ; who, not caring to 
destroy it, had taken it in his breast into the packet ; and, by 
course of feeding it, and taking it once under his protection, in 
a day or two grew fond of it, and got it safe along with him to 
Paris. 

At Paris, the lad had laid out a livre in a little cage for the 
starling ; and, as he had little to do better, the five months his 
master staid there, he taught it in his mother's tongue the four 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 107 

simple words (and no more) to which I owned myself so 
much its debtor. 

Upon his master's going on for Italy, the lad had given it 
to the master of the hotel. But his little song for liberty being 
in an unknown language at Paris, the bird had little or no 
store set by him : so La Fleur bought both him and his cage 
for me for a bottle of Burgundy. 

In my return from Italy, I brought him with me to the 
country in whose language he had learned his notes ; and 
telling the story of him to Lord A., Lord A. begged the bird 
of me ; in a week, Lord A. gave him to Lord B ; Lord B. 
made a present of him to Lord C. ; and Lord C.'s gentleman 
sold him to Lord D.'s for a shilling ; Lord D. gave him to 
Lord E. ; and so on — half round the alphabet. From that 
rank, he passed into the lower house, and passed the hands of 
as many commoners. But as all these wanted to get in, and 
my bird wanted to get out, he had almost as little store set by 
him in London as at Paris. 

It is impossible but many of my readers must have heard 
of him ; and if any by mere chance have ever seen him, I beg 
leave to inform them, that that bird was my bird, or some vile 
copy set up to represent him. 

I have nothing farther to add upon him, but that from 
that time to this I have borne this poor starling as the crest to 
my arms : — and let the herald's officers twist his neck about if 
they dare. 




108 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



THE ADDRESS. 



VERSAILLES. 



I should not like to have my enemy take a view of my mind 
when I am going to ask protection of any man ; for which 
reason, I generally endeavour to protect myself; but this 

going to Monsieur le Due de C was an act of compulsion ; 

had it been an act of choice, I should have done it, I suppose, 
like other people. 

How many mean plans of dirty address, as I went along, 
did my servile heart form ! I deserved the Bastile for every 
one of them. 

Then nothing would serve me, when I got within sight of 
Versailles, but putting words and sentences together, and con- 
ceiving attitudes and tones to wreath myself into Monsieur le 

Due de C 's good graces. " This will do," said I. — 

" Just as well," retorted I again, "as a coat carried up to him 
by an adventurous tailor, without taking his measure. Fool?" 
continued I, " see Monsieur le Due's face first; observe what 
character is written in it ; take notice in what posture he 
stands to hear you ; mark the turns and expressions of his 
body and limbs ; and for the tone, the first sound which comes 
from his lips will give it you ; and from all these together 
you '11 compound an address at once upon the spot, which can- 
not disgust the Duke ; the ingredients are his own, and most 
likely to go down." 

" Well," said I, " I wish it well over. " Coward, again ! 
as if man to man was not equal throughout the whole surface 
of the globe ; and if in the field, why not face to face in the 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 109 

cabinet, too I And trust nie, Yorick, whenever it is not so, 
man is false to himself, and betrays his own succours ten times 

where nature does it once. Go to the Due de C with the 

Bastile in thy looks ; my life for it, thou wilt be sent back to 
Paris in half-an-hour with an escort." 

" I believe so," said I : " then I '11 go to the Duke, by 
Heaven ! with all the gaiety and debonairness in the world." 

— " And there you are wrong again," replied I ; "a heart 
at ease, Yorick, flies into no extremes ; 't is ever on its centre. 
— "Well ! well ! " cried I, as the coachman turned in at the 
gates, " I find I shall do very well ;" and by the time he had 
wheeled round the court, and brought me up to the door, I 
found myself so much the better for my own lecture, that I 
neither ascended the steps like a victim to justice, who was to 
part with life upon the topmast ; nor did I mount them with 
a skip and a couple of strides, as I do when I fly up, Eliza ! 
to thee to meet it. 

As I entered the door of the saloon, I was met by a person, 
who possibly might be the maitre d' hotel, but had more the 
air of one of the under-secretaries, who told me the Due de 

C was busy. " I am utterly ignorant," said I, " of the 

forms of obtaining an audience, being an absolute stranger ; 
and, what is worse, in the present conjuncture of affairs, being 
an Englishman too." He replied, " that did not increase the 
difficulty." I made him a slight bow, and told him I had 
something of importance to say to Monsieur le Due. The 
secretary looked towards the stairs, as if he was about to leave 
me to carry up this account to some one. " But I must not 
mislead you," said I, " for what I have to say is of no manner 
of importance to Monsieur le Due de C , but of great im- 
portance to myself." " C" est une autre affaire," replied he. 
" Not at all," said I, "to a man of gallantry. But pray, good 
sir," continued I, " when can a stranger hope to have access ? " 
" In not less than two hours," said he, looking at his watch. 
The number of equipages in the court-yard seemed to justify 



110 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



the calculation, that I could have no nearer a prospect ; and, 
as walking backwards and forwards in the saloon, without a 
soul to commune with, was, for the time, as bad as being in 
the Bastile itself, I instantly went back to my remise, and bid 
the coachman drive me to the Cordon Bleu, which was the 
nearest hotel. 

I think there is a fatality in it ; I seldom go to the place I 
set out for. 




THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



Ill 




Before I had got half way down the street, I changed my 
mind : "Asl am at Versailles," thought I, " I might as well 
take a view of the town ; so I pulled the cord, and ordered 
the coachman to drive round some of the principal streets. 
" I suppose the town is not very large," said I. The coach- 
man begged pardon for setting me right, and told me it was 
very superb, and that numbers of the first dukes and mar- 

quisses and counts had hotels. The Count de B , of whom 

the bookseller at the Quai de Conti had spoke so handsomely 
the night before, came instantly into my mind. "And why 

should I not go," thought I, "to the Count de B , who 

has so high an idea of English books and English men, and 
tell him my story?" so I changed my mind a second time. 
In truth it was the third ; for I had intended that day for 

Madame de R , in the Rue St. Pierre, and had devoutly 

sent her word by her fille de chambre that I would assuredly 
wait upon her ; but I am governed by circumstances, I cannot 
govern them : so seeing a man standing with a basket on the 



112 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



other side of the street, as if he had something to sell, I bid 
La Fleur go up to him, and enquire for the Count's hotel. 

La Fleur returned a little pale ; and told me it was a 
Chevalier de St. Louis selling pates. "It is impossible, La 
Fleur," said I. La Fleur could no more account for the 
phenomenon than myself ; but persisted in his story : he had 
seen the croix set in gold, with its red riband, he said, tied to 
his button-hole, and had looked into the basket and seen the 
pates which the Chevalier was selling ; so could not be mis- 
taken in that. 

Such a reverse in man's life awakens a better principle 
than curiosity : I could not help looking for some time at him, 
as I sat in the remise : the more I looked at him, his croix, 
and his basket, the stronger they wove themselves into my 
brain. I got out of the remise, and went towards him. 




THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 113 

He was begirt with a clean linen apron which fell below 
his knees, and with a sort of a bib that went half way up his 
breast ; upon the top of this, but a little below the hem, hung 
his croix. His basket of little pates was covered over with a 
white damask napkin ; another of the same kind was spread at 
the bottom ; and there was a look of proprete and neatness 
throughout, that one might have bought his pates of him, as 
much from appetite as sentiment. 

He made an offer of them to neither ; but stood still with 
them at the corner of an hotel, for those to buy who chose it, 
without solicitation. 

He was about forty-eight, of a sedate look, something 
approaching to gravity. I did not wonder. I went up rather 
to the basket than him, and having lifted up the napkin, and 
taking one of his pates into my hand, I begged he would 
explain the appearance which affected me. 

He told me in a few words, that the best part of his 
life had passed in the service, in which, after spending a 
small patrimony, he had obtained a company, and the croix 
with it ; but that, at the conclusion of the last peace, his 
regiment being reformed, and the whole corps, with those 
of some other regiments, left without any provision, he found 
himself in a wide world without friends, without a livre ; 
" and indeed," said he, " without any thing but this" 
(pointing, as he said it, to his croix). The poor Chevalier 
won my pity, and he finished the scene with winning my 
esteem too. 

" The King," he said, " was the most generous of princes, 
but his generosity could neither relieve nor reward every one, 
and it was only his misfortune to be amongst the number. 
He had a little wife," he said, " whom he loved, who did the 
patisserie ;" and added, " he felt no dishonour in defending 
her and himself from want in this way — unless Providence 
had offered him a better. 



114 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

It would be wicked to withhold a pleasure from the good, 
in passing over what happened to this poor Chevalier of St. 
Louis, about nine months after. 

It seems he usually took his stand near the iron gates 
which lead up to the palace, and as his croix had caught the 
eye of numbers, numbers had made the same enquiry which I 
had done. He had told them the same story, and always with 
so much modesty and good sense, that it had reached at last 
the King's ears ; who, hearing the Chevalier had been a 
gallant officer, and respected by the whole regiment as a man 
of honour and integrity, he broke up his little trade by a 
pension of fifteen hundred livres a-year. 

As I have told this to please the reader, I beg he will 
allow me to relate another, out of its order, to please myself; 
the two stories reflect light upon each other, and 'tis a pity 
they should be parted. 




THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



115 




THE SWORD. 



RENNES. 



When states and empires have their periods of declension, and 
feel in their turns what distress and poverty is, I stop not to 

tell the causes which gradually brought the house of d' E , 

in Brittany, into decay. The Marquess d' E had fought 

up against his condition with great firmness ; wishing to pre- 
serve, and still shew to the world, some little fragments of 
what his ancestors had been : their indiscretions had put it 
out of his power. There was enough left for the little exigen- 
cies of obscurity ; but he had two boys who looked up to him 
for light : he thought they deserved it. He had tried his 
sword, — it could not open the way — the mounting was too ex- 
pensive, and simple economy was not a match for it: there 
was no resource but commerce. 



116 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

In any other province in France, save Brittany, this was 
smiting the root for ever of the little tree his pride and affec- 
tion wished to see re-blossom. But in Brittany, there being a 
provision for this, he availed himself of it ; and taking an 
occasion when the states were assembled at Rennes, the 
Marquess, attended with his two boys, entered the court ; and 
having pleaded the right of an ancient law of the duchy, 
which, though seldom claimed, he said, was no less in force, 
he took his sword from his side. " Here," said he, " take it ; 
and be trusty guardians of it, till better times put me in con- 
dition to reclaim it." 

The president accepted the Marquess's sword : he staid a 
few minutes to see it deposited in the archives of his house, 
and departed. 

The Marquess and his whole family embarked the next day 
for Martinico ; and in about nineteen or twenty years of suc- 
cessful application to business, with some unlooked for be- 
quests from distant branches of his house, returned home to 
reclaim his nobility, and to support it. 

It was an incident of good fortune, which will never hap- 
pen to any traveller but a sentimental one, that I should be at 
Rennes at the very time of this solemn requisition : I call it 
solemn — it was so to me. 

The Marquess entered the court with his whole family : he 
supported his lady, his eldest son supported his sister, and his 
youngest was at the other extreme of the line next his mother ; 
he put his handkerchief to his face twice — 

— There was a dead silence. When the Marquess had ap- 
proached within six paces of the tribunal, he gave the Mar- 
chioness to his youngest son, and advancing three steps before 
his family, he reclaimed his sword. His sword was given 
him ; and the moment he got it into his hand, he drew it 
almost out of the scabbard, — 't was the shining face of a friend 
he had once given up ; he looked attentively along it, begin- 
ning at the hilt, as if to see whether it was the same ; when, 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



li 



observing a little rust which it had contracted near the point, 
he brought it near his eye, and bending his head down over it, 
I think I saw a tear fall upon the place : I could not be de- 
ceived, by what followed. 

" I shall find," said he, "some other way to get it off." 
When the Marquess had said this, he returned his sword 
into its scabbard, made a bow to the guardians of it, and with 
his wife and daughter, and his two sons following him, walked 
out. 

Oh, how I envied him his feelings ! 




118 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



THE PASSPORT 



VERSAILLES. 



I found no difficulty in getting admittance to Monsieur le 

Count de B- . The set of Shakspere was laid upon the 

table, and he was tumbling them over. I walked up close to 
the table, and giving first such a look at the books as to make 
him conceive I knew what they were, I told him I had come 
without any one to present me, knowing I should meet with a 
friend in his apartment, who, I trusted, would do it for me : — 
" 'Tis my countryman, the great Shakspere," said I, pointing 
to his works : " et ayez la bonte, mon cher ami" apostrophising 
his spirit, added I, " de me faire cet honneur-la." 

The Count smiled at the singularity of the introduction, 
and seeing I looked a little pale and sickly, insisted upon my 
taking an arm-chair ; so I sat down ; and to save him conjec- 
tures upon a visit so out of all rule, I told him simply of the 
incident in the bookseller's shop, and how that had impelled 
me rather to go to him with the story of a little embarrass- 
ment I was under, than to any other man in France. " And 
what is your embarrassment ? let me hear it," said the Count. 
So I told him the story just as I have told it the reader. 

— " And the master of my hotel," said I, as I concluded it, 
" will needs have it, Monsieur le Count, that I shall be sent to 
the Bastile; but I have no apprehensions," continued I; " for, 
in falling into the hands of the most polished people in the 
world, and being conscious I was a true man, and not come to 
spy the nakedness of the land, I scarce thought I lay at their 
mercy. It does not suit the gallantry of the French, Monsieur 
le Count," said I, " to shew it against invalids." 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 119 

An animated blush came into the Count de B 's cheeks 

as I spoke this. " Ne craignez rien. — Don't fear," said he. 
" Indeed, I do n't," replied I again. " Besides," continued I, 
a little sportingly, " I have come laughing all the way from 
London to Paris, and I do not think Monsieur le Due de 
Choiseul is such an enemy to mirth as to send me back crying 
for my pains. 

— " My application to you, Monsieur le Count de B ," 

making him a low bow, "is to desire he will not." 

The Count heard me with great good nature, or I had not 
said half as much; and once or twice said, " C est bien dit" 
So I rested my cause there, and determined to say no more 
about it. 

The Count led the discourse : we talked of indifferent 
things ; of books, and politics, and men, — and then of women. 
" God bless them all ! " said I, after much discourse about 
them ; " there is not a man upon earth who loves them so 
much as I do : after all the foibles I have seen, and all the 
satires I have read against them, still I love them ; being 
firmly persuaded that a man, who has not a sort of affection 
for the whole sex, is incapable of ever loving a single one as 
he ought." 

"Eh bien! Monsieur VAnglois" said the Count, gaily; 
" you are not come to spy the nakedness of the land ; I be- 
lieve you ; ni encore, I dare say, that of our women ; but per- 
mit me to conjecture, — if, par hasard, they fell into your way, 
that the prospect would not affect you." 

I have something within me which cannot bear the shock 
of the least indecent insinuation : in the sportability of chit-chat 
I have often endeavoured to conquer it, and with infinite pain 
have hazarded a thousand things to a dozen of the sex to- 
gether, — the least of which I could not venture to a single one 
to gain heaven. 

" Excuse me, Monsieur le Count," said I ; "as for the 
nakedness of your land, if I saw it, I should cast my eyes over 



120 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



it with tears in them ; and for that of your women," blushing 
at the idea he had excited in me, " I am so evangelical in this, 
and have such a fellow-feeling for whatever is weak about 
them, that I would cover it with a garment, if I knew how to 
throw it on ; but I could wish," continued I, " to spy the na- 
kedness of their hearts, and through the different disguises of 
customs, climates, and religion, find out what is good in them 
to fashion my own by ; and therefore am I come. 

" It is for this reason, Monsieur le Count," continued I, 
" that I have not seen the Palais Royal, nor the Luxembourg, 
nor the Facade of the Louvre, nor have attempted to swell 
the catalogues we have of pictures, statues, and churches. I 
conceive every fair being as a temple, and would rather enter 
in, and see the original drawings and loose sketches hung up 
in it, than the Transfiguration of Raphael itself. 

" The thirst of this," continued T, " as impatient as that 
which inflames the breast of the connoisseur, has led me from 
my own home into France; and from France will lead me 
through Italy : 't is a quiet journey of the heart in pursuit of 
Nature, and those affections which arise out of her, which 
make us love each other — and the world, better than we do." 

The Count said a great many civil things to me upon the 
occasion ; and added very politely, how much he stood obliged 
to Shakspere for making me known to him. " But, a propos" 
said he, " Shakspere is full of great things ; he forgot a small 
punctilio of announcing your name : it puts you under a ne- 
cessity of doing it yourself." 




THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 121 



THE PASSPORT. 



VERSAILLES. 



There is not a more perplexing affair in life to me, than to 
set about telling any one who I am, — for there is scarce any 
body I cannot give a better account of than myself; and I 
have often wished I could do it in a single word, and have an 
end of it. It was the only time and occasion in my life I 
could accomplish this to any purpose ; for Shakspere lying 
upon the table, and recollecting I was in his books, I took up 
Hamlet, and turning immediately to the grave-diggers' scene, 
in the fifth act, I laid my finger upon Yorick, and advancing 
the book to the Count, with my finger all the way over the 
name. " Me void!" said I. 

Now whether the idea of poor Yorick's skull was put out 
of the Count's mind by the reality of my own, or by what 
magic he could drop a period of seven or eight hundred years, 
makes nothing in this account ; 't is certain the French con- 
ceive better than they combine. I wonder at nothing in this 
world, and the less at this ; inasmuch, as one of the first of our 
own church, for whose candour and paternal sentiments I have 
the highest veneration, fell into the very same mistake, in the 
very same case. " He could not bear," he said, " to look into 
the sermons wrote by the King of Denmark's jester." " Good, 
my lord! " said I ; " but there are two Yoricks. The Yorick 
your lordship thinks of, has been dead and buried eight hun- 
dred years ago : he flourished in Horwendillus's court : the 
other Yorick is myself, who have flourished, my lord, in no 
court." He shook his head : — " Good God ! " said I ; " you 

Q 



122 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



might as well confound Alexander the Great with Alexander 
the Coppersmith, my lord." " 'T was all one," he replied. — 

" If Alexander, King of Macedon, could have translated 
your lordship," said I, " I 'm sure your lordship would not 
have said so." 

The poor Count de B fell but into the same error. 

" Et Monsieur, est-il Yorick?" cried the Count. " Je le 
suis" said I. "Vous?" " Moi — moi, qui ai V honneur de 
vous parler, Monsieur le Comte ." " Mon DieuV said he, em- 
bracing me; " Vous etes Yorickf" 

The Count instantly put the Shakspere into his pocket, 
and left me alone in his room. 




THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 123 



THE PASSPORT. 



VERSAILLES. 



I could not conceive why the Count de B had gone so 

abruptly out of the room, any more than I could conceive 
why he had put the Shakspere into his pocket. Mysteries 
which must explain themselves are not worth the loss of time 
which a conjecture about them takes up : 't was better to read 
Shakspere ; so, taking up " Much Ado about Nothing," I trans- 
ported myself instantly from the chair I sat in to Messina in 
Sicily, and got so busy with Don Pedro, and Benedict, and 
Beatrice, that I thought not of Versailles, the Count, or the 
passport. 

Sweet pliability of man's spirit, that can at once surrender 
itself to illusions, which cheat expectation and sorrow of their 
weary moments! Long — long since had ye numbered out 
my days, had I not trod so great a part of them upon this 
enchanted ground. When my way is too rough for my feet, 
or too steep for my strength, I get off it, to some smooth 
velvet path, which fancy has scattered over with rosebuds of 
delights; and having taken a few turns in it, come back 
strengthened and refreshed. When evils press sore upon me, 
and there is no retreat from them in this world, then I take a 
new course — I leave it ; and as I have a clearer idea of the 
Elysian fields than I have of heaven, I force myself, like 
iEneas, into them. I see him meet the pensive shade of his 
forsaken Dido, and wish to recognise it; I see the injured 
spirit wave her head, and turn off silent from the author of her 
miseries and dishonours ; I lose the feelings for myself in hers, 



124 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

and in those affections which were wont to make me mourn 
for her when I was at school. 

Surely this is not walking in a vain shadow nor does man 
disquiet himself in vain by it : he oftener does so in trusting 
the issue of his commotions to reason only. I can safely say 
for myself, I was never able to conquer any one single bad 
sensation in my heart so decisively, as by beating up as fast as 
I could for some kindly and gentle sensation to fight it upon 
its own ground. 

When I had got to the end of the third act, the Count de 

B entered, with my passport in his hand. " Monsieur le 

Due de C ," said the Count, " is as good a prophet, I dare 

say, as he is a statesman. ' Un homme qui rit,' said the Duke, 
' ne sera jamais danger eux.' Had it been for any one but the 
King's jester," added the Count, " I could not have got it 
these two hours." " Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur le Count," said 
I; I am not the King's jester." "But you are Yorick?" 
"Yes." " Et vous plaisantez?" "I answered, "Indeed I 
did jest ; but was not paid for it : 't was entirely at my own 
expense. 

" We have no jester at court, Monsieur le Count," said I ; 
" the last we had was in the licentious reign of Charles II. ; 
since which time, our manners have been so gradually refining, 
that our court at present is so full of patriots, who wish for 
nothing but the honours and wealth of their country ; and our 
ladies are all so chaste, so spotless, so good, so devout — there 
is nothing for a jester to make a jest of. 
" Voila un persiflage ! '" cried the Count. 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



125 




THE PASSPORT. 



VERSAILLES. 



As the passport was directed to all lieutenant-governors, 
governors, and commandants of cities, generals of armies, jus- 
ticiaries, and all officers of justice, to let Mr. Yorick, the 
King's jester, and his baggage, travel quietly along, — I own the 
triumph of obtaining the passport was not a little tarnished by 
the figure I cut in it. But there is nothing unmixed in this 
world ; and some of the gravest of our divines have carried it 
so far as to affirm, that enjoyment itself was attended with a 
sigh ; and that the greatest they knew of terminated in a 
general way, in little better than a convulsion. 

I remember the grave and learned Bevoriskius, in his 
" Commentary upon the Generations from Adam," very natu- 
rally breaks off in the middle of a note, to give an account to 
the world of a couple of sparrows upon the out edge of his 
window, which had incommoded him all the time he wrote, 
and at last had entirely taken him off from his genealogy. 



126 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

— "'Tis strange!" writes Bevoriskius ; "but the facts 
are certain, for I have had the curiosity to mark them down 
one by one with my pen; but the cock-sparrow, during the 
little time that I could have finished the other half of this 
note, has actually interrupted me, with the reiteration of his 
caresses, three and twenty times and a half. 

"How merciful," adds Bevoriskius, "is Heaven to His 
creatures ! " 

111 fated Yorick ! that the gravest of thy brethren should 
be able to write that to the world, which stains thy face with 
crimson to copy, even in thy study. 

But this is nothing to my travels ; so I twice — twice beg 
pardon for it. 



CHARACTER. 

VERSAILLES 

"And how do you find the French?" said the Count de 
B , after he had given me the passport. 

The reader may suppose, that after so obliging a proof of 
courtesy, I could not be at a loss to say something handsome 
to the enquiry. 

— " Mais passe, pour cela. — Speak frankly," said he : " do 
you find all the urbanity in the French which the world give 
us the honour of?" "I had found everything," I said, 
" which confirmed it." " Vraiment" said the Count, " les 
Francois sont polls ." " To an excess," replied I. 

The Count took notice of the word excess ; and would 
have it I meant more than I said. I defended myself a long- 
time as well as I could against it : he insisted I had a reserve, 
and that I would speak my opinion frankly. 

" I believe, Monsieur le Count," said I, " that man has a 
certain compass as well as an instrument ; and that the social 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 127 

and other calls have occasion by turns for every key in him ; 
so that if you begin a note too high or too low, there must be 
a want either in the upper or under part, to fill up the system 

of harmony." The Count de B did not understand music, 

so desired me to explain it in some other way. " A polished 
nation, my dear Count," said I, "makes every one its debtor; 
and besides, urbanity itself, like the fair sex, has so many 
charms, it goes against the heart to say it can do ill ; and yet, 
I believe, there is but a certain line of perfection, that man, take 
him all together, is empowered to arrive at : if he gets beyond, 
he rather exchanges qualities than gets them. I must not pre- 
sume to say how far this has affected the French, in the sub- 
ject we are speaking of; but, should it ever be the case of the 
English, in the progress of their refinements, to arrive at the 
same polish which distinguishes the French, if we did not lose 
the politesse du cceur, which inclines men more to humane 
actions than courteous ones, we should at least lose that distinct 
variety and originality of character, which distinguishes them, 
not only from each other, but from all the world besides. 

I had a few of King William's shillings, as smooth as glass, 
in my pocket ; and foreseeing they would be of use in the 
illustration of my hypothesis, I had got them into my hand 
when I had proceeded so far : — 

II See, Monsieur le Count," said I, rising up, and laying 
them before him upon the table ; by jingling and rubbing one 
against another for seventy years together in one body's 
pocket or another's, they are become so much alike, you can 
scarce distinguish one shilling from another. 

" The English, like ancient medals, kept more apart, and 
passing but few people's hands, preserve the first sharpnesses 
which the fine hand of Nature has given them ; they are not 
so pleasant to feel ; but in return, the legend is so visible, that 
at the first look you see whose image and superscription they 
bear. But the French, Monsieur le Count," added I, wishing 
to soften what I had said, " have so many excellences, they 



128 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



can the better spare this : they are a loyal, a gallant, a gene- 
rous, an ingenious, and good-tempered people as is under 
heaven ; if they have a fault, they are too serious." 

" Mon Dieu /" cried the Count, rising out of his chair. 

"Mais vous plaisantez," said he, correcting his exclama- 
tion. I had laid my hand upon my breast, and with earnest 
gravity assured him it was my most settled opinion. 

The Count said he was mortified he could not stay to hear 
my reasons, being engaged to go that moment to dine with the 
Due de C . 

" But if it is not too far to come to Versailles to eat your 
soup with me, I beg, before you leave France, I may have the 
pleasure of knowing you retract your opinion ; or, in what 
manner you support it. But if you do support it, Monsieur 
Anglois" said he, " you must do it with all your powers, 
because you have the whole world against you." I promised 
the Count I would do myself the honour of dining with him 
before I set out for Italy ; so took my leave. 




THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



129 




THE TEMPTATION, 



PARIS. 



When I alighted at the hotel, the porter told me a young 
woman with a bandbox had been that moment enquiring for 
me. " I do not know," said the porter, " whether she is gone 
away or not." I took the key of my chamber of him, and 
went up stairs ; and when I had got within ten steps of the 
top of the landing before my door, I met her coming easily 
down. 

It was the fair file de chambre I had walked along the 

Quai de Conti with. Madanie de II had sent her upon 

some commission to a marchande de modes within a step or 
two of the Hotel de Modene ; and, as I had failed waiting upon 
her, had bid her enquire if I had left Paris ; and, if so, whether 
I had not left a letter addressed to her. 

As the fair fille de chambre was so near my door, she 
returned back, and went into the room with me for a moment 
or two whilst I wrote a card. 

It was a fine still evening in the latter end of the month of 
May, the crimson window curtains (which were of the same 
colour as those of the bed) were drawn close : the sun was 

R 



130 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



setting, and reflected through them so warm a tint into the fair 
fille de chambres face, I thought she blushed ; the idea of it 
made me blush myself; we were quite alone ; and that super- 
induced a second blush before the first could get off. 

There is a sort of a pleasing half-guilty blush, where the 
blood is more in fault than the man : 'tis sent impetuous from 
the heart, and virtue flies after it, not to call it back, but to 
make the sensation of it more delicious to the nerves : 't is 
associated. 

But I '11 not describe it : I felt something at first within 
me which was not in strict unison with the lesson of virtue I 
had given her the night before. I sought five minutes for a 
card ; I knew I had not one. I took up a pen. I laid it 
down again, my hand trembled : the devil was in me. 

I know as well as any one he is an adversary, whom, if we 
resist, he will fly from us ; but I seldom resist him at all : 
from a terror that, though I may conquer, I may still get a 
hurt in the combat ; so I give up the triumph for security ; 
and, instead of thinking to make him fly, I generally fly 
myself. 

The fair fille de chambre came close up to the bureau 
where I was looking for a card, took up first the pen I cast 
down, then offered to hold me the ink ; she offered it so 
sweetly, I was going to accept it, but I durst not ; "I have 
nothing, my dear," said I, " to write upon." " "Write it," 
said she, simply, "upon anything." 

I was just going to cry out, " Then I will write it, fair girl ! 
upon thy lips ! " 

" If I do," said I, " I shall perish ; " so I took her by the 
hand, and led her to the door, and begged she would not 
forget the lesson I had given her. She said, "indeed she 
would not ; " and, as she uttered it with some earnestness, she 
turned about, and gave me both her hands, closed together, 
into mine ; it was impossible not to compress them in that 
situation ; I wished to let them go : and all the time I held 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



131 



ra^ 




them, I kept arguing within myself against it, and still I held 
them on. In two minutes I found I had all the battle to fight 
over again ; and I felt my legs and every limb about me 
tremble at the idea. 

The foot of the bed was within a yard and a-half of the 
place where we were standing. I had still hold of her hands 
(and how it happened I can give no account) ; but I neither 
asked her, nor drew her, nor did I think of the bed ; but so 
it did happen, we both sat down. 

"I'll just shew you," said the fair fille de chambre, "the 
little purse I have been making to-day to hold your crown." 
So she put her hand into her right pocket, which was next me, 
and felt for it some time, then into the left. " She had lost 
it." I never bore expectation more quietly : it was in her 
right pocket at last ; she pulled it out ; it was of green taffeta, 
lined with a little bit of white quilted satin, and just big 
enough to hold the crown ; she put it into my hand ; it was 
pretty ; and I held it ten minutes with the back of my hand 



132 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



resting upon her lap, looking sometimes at the purse, some- 
times on one side of it. 

A stitch or two had broke out in the gathers of my stock ; 
the fair fille de chambre, without saying a word, took out her 
little housewife, threaded a small needle, and sewed it up. I 
foresaw it would hazard the glory of the day ; and, as she 
passed her hand in silence across and across my neck in the 
manoeuvre, I felt the laurels shake which fancy had wreathed 
about my head. 

A strap had given way in her walk, and the buckle of her 
shoe was just falling off. " See," said the fille de chambre, 
" holding up her foot." I could not for my soul but fasten 
the buckle in return, and putting in the strap, and lifting up 
the other foot with it, when I had done, to see both were 
right ; in doing it too suddenly, it unavoidably threw the fair 
fille de chambre off her centre — and then — 



THE CONQUEST. 



Yes; and then Ye whose clay-cold heads and luke- 
warm hearts can argue down or mask your passions^ tell me, 
what trespass is it that man should have them ? or how his 
spirit stands answerable to the Father of spirits but for his 
conduct under them. 

If Nature has so wove her web of kindness, that some 
threads of love and desire are entangled with the piece, must 
the whole web be rent in drawing them out ? " Whip me 
such stoics, great Governor of Nature!" said I to myself; 
" wherever thy providence shall place me for the trials of my 
virtue, whatever is my danger, whatever is my situation, let 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



133 



me feel the movements which arise out of it, and which belong 
to me as a man : and if I govern them as a good one, I will 
trust the issues to thy justice ; for thou hast made us, and not 
we ourselves." 

As I finished my address, I raised the fair fille de chambre 
up by the hand, and led her out of the room ; she stood by me 
till I locked the door and put the key in my pocket ; and then, 
the victory being quite decisive, and not till then, I pressed 
my lips to her cheek, and taking her by the hand again, led 
her safe to the gate of the hotel. 




134 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 




THE MYSTERY. 



PARIS. 



Iv a man knows the heart, he will know it was impossible to 
go back instantly to my chamber ; it was touching a cold key 
with a flat third to it, upon the close of a piece of music which 
had called forth my affections ; therefore, when 1 let go the 
hand of the fille de chambre, I remained at the gate of the 
hotel for some time, looking at every one who passed by, and 
forming conjectures upon them, till my attention got fixed 
upon a single object which confounded all kind of reasoning 
upon him. 

It was a tall figure, of a philosophic, serious, adust look, 
which passed and repassed sedately along the street, making a 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 135 

turn of about sixty paces on each side of the gate of the hotel ; 
the man was about fifty- two ; had a small cane under his arm ; 
was dressed in a dark drab-coloured coat, waistcoat, and 
breeches, which seemed to have seen some years' service : they 
were still clean, and there was a little air of frugal proprete 
throughout him. By his pulling off his hat, and his attitude 
of accosting a good many in his way, I saw he was asking cha- 
rity ; so I got a sous or two out of my pocket ready to give 
him, as he took me in his turn. He passed by me without 
asking anything ; and yet did not go five steps further before 
he asked charity of a little woman. I was much more likely 
to have given of the two. He had scarce done with the 
woman, when he pulled off his hat to another who was coming 
the same way. An ancient gentleman came slowly, and, after 
him, a young smart one : he let them both pass, and asked 
nothing. I stood observing him half an hour ; in which time 
he had made a dozen turns, backwards and forwards, and 
found that he invariably pursued the same plan. 

There were two things very singular in this, which set my 
brain to work, and to no purpose : the first was, why the man 
should only tell his story to the sex ; and, secondly, what kind 
of story it was, and what species of eloquence it could be, 
which softened the hearts of the women, which he knew 't was 
to no purpose to practise upon the men. 

There were two other circumstances, which entangled this 
mystery : the one was, he told every woman what he had to 
say in her ear, and in a way which had much more the air of 
a secret than a petition ; the other was, it was always success- 
ful. He never stopped a woman, but she pulled out her purse, 
and immediately gave him something. 

I could form no system to explain the phenomenon. 

I had got a riddle to amuse me for the rest of the evening ; 
so I walked up stairs to my chamber. 



13G 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 







THE CASE OF CONSCIENCE. 



PARTS. 



I was immediately followed up by the master of the hotel, 
who came into my room to tell me I must provide lodgings 
elsewhere. " How so, friend ?" said I. He answered, I had 
had a young woman locked up with me two hours that even- 
ing in my bedchamber, and 'twas against the rules of his 
house. " Very well," said I, " we '11 all part friends then, for 
the girl is no worse, and I am no worse, and you will be just 
as I found you."- " It was enough," he said, " to overthrow 
the credit of his hotel. Vous voyez, Monsieur," said he, point- 
ing to the foot of the bed we had been sitting upon. I own it 
had something of the appearance of an evidence ; but my pride 
not suffering me to enter into any detail of the case, I 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 137 

exhorted him to let his soul sleep in peace, as I resolved to let 
mine do that night, and that I would discharge what I owed 
him at breakfast. 

" I should not have minded, Monsieur" said he "if you 

had had twenty girls " " 'T is a score more," replied I, 

interrupting him, " than I ever reckoned upon." " Provided," 
added he, " it had been but in a morning." " And does the 
difference in the time of the day at Paris, make a difference in 
the sin?" "It made a difference," he said, " in the scandal." I 
like a good distinction in my heart ; and cannot say I was into- 
lerably out of temper with the man. " I own it is necessary," 
resumed the master of the hotel, " that a stranger at Paris 
should have the opportunities presented to him of buying lace 
and silk stockings and ruffles, et tout cela ; and 't is nothing if 
a woman comes with a bandbox." "Oh, my conscience!" 
said I ; " she had one ; but I never looked into it." " Then 
Monsieur" said he, " has bought nothing." " Not one earthly 
thing," replied I. " Because," said he, " I could recommend 
one to you who would use you en conscience" " But I must 
see her this night," said I. He made me a low bow, and 
walked down. 

" Now shall I triumph over this maitre d' hotel " cried I. 
And what then ? " Then I shall let him see I know he is a 
dirty fellow." And what then ? What then ? I was too near 
myself to say it was for the sake of others. I had no good 
answer left ; there was more of spleen than of principle in my 
project, and I was sick of it before the execution. 

In a few minutes the grisette came in with her box of lace. 
" I '11 buy nothing, however," said I, within myself. 

The grisette would shew me everything ; I was hard to 
please : she would not seem to see it ; she opened her little 
magazine, and laid all her laces one after another before me — 
unfolded and folded them up again one by one with the most 
patient sweetness. I might buy, or not ; she would let me 
have everything at my own price : the poor creature seemed 



138 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



anxious to get a penny, and laid herself out to win me ; and 
not so much in a manner which seemed artful, as in one I felt 
simple and caressing. 

If there is not a fund of honest cullibility in man, so much 
the worse ; my heart relented, and I gave up my second reso- 
lution as quietly as the first. " Why should I chastise one for 
the trespass of another ? If thou art tributary to this tyrant 
of an host," thought I, looking up in her face, " so much 
harder is thy bread." 

If I had not had more than four louis d' ors in my purse, 
there was no such thing as rising up and showing her the door, 
till I had first laid three of them out in a pair of ruffles. 

— The master of the hotel will share the profit with her ; 
no matter, then I have only paid as many a poor soul has paid 
before me, for an act he could not do, or think of. 




THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 1 S9 



THE RIDDLE. 



PARIS. 



When La Fleur came up to wait upon me at supper, he told 
me how sorry the master of the hotel was for his affront to me 
in bidding me change my lodgings. 

A man who values a good night's rest will not lie down 
with enmity in his heart, if he can help it. So I bid La Fleur 
tell the master of the hotel that I was sorry on my side for the 
occasion I had given him ; " and you may tell him, if you will, 
La Fleur," added I, " that, if the young woman should call 
again, I shall not see her." 

This was a sacrifice, not to him, but myself; having 
resolved, after so narrow an escape, to run no more risks, 
but to leave Paris, if it was possible, with all the virtue I 
entered it. 

" C est deroger a noblesse, Monsieur" said La Fleur, 
making me a bow down to the ground as he said it. " Et 
encore, Monsieur" said he, " may change his sentiments ; and 

if {par hasard) he should like to amuse himself " " I find 

no amusement in it," said I, interrupting him. 

" Mon Dieu!" said La Fleur — and took away. 

In an hour's time he came to put me to bed, and was more 
than commonly officious : something hung upon his lips to say 
to me, or ask me, which he could not get off: I could not 
conceive what it was, and indeed gave myself little trouble to 
find it out, as I had another riddle so much more interesting 
upon my mind, which was that of the man's asking charity 
before the door of the hotel. I would have given anything to 



140 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

have got to the bottom of it ; and that, not out of curiosity — 
't is so low a principle of enquiry in general, I would not pur- 
chase the gratification of it with a two-sous piece. But a 
secret, I thought, which so soon and so certainly softened the 
heart of every woman you came near, was a secret at least 
equal to the philosopher's stone ; had I had both the Indies, I 
would have given up one to have been master of it. 

I tossed and turned it almost all night long in my brains 
to no manner of purpose ; and when I awoke in the morning I 
found my spirits as much troubled with my dreams as ever the 
King of Babylon had been with his ; and I will not hesitate to 
affirm, it would have puzzled all the wise men of Paris as much 
as those of Chaldea to have given its interpretation. 



LE DIMANCHE. 



PARIS. 



It was Sunday ; and when La Fleur came in, in the morning, 
with my coffee and roll and butter, he had got himself so gal- 
lantly arrayed, I scarce knew him. 

I had covenanted at Montreuil to give him a new hat with 
~& silver button and loop, and four louis d'ors, pour sadoniser, 
when we got to Paris ; and the poor fellow, to do him justice, 
had done wonders with it. 

He had bought a bright, clean, good scarlet coat, and a 
pair of breeches of the same. " They were not a crown 
worse," he said, " for the wearing." I wished him hanged 
for telling me. They looked so fresh, that though I knew the 
thing could not be done, yet I would rather have imposed upon 
my fancy with thinking I had bought them new for the fellow, 
than that they had come out of the Rue de Friperie. 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY 



14] 




This is a nicety which makes not the heart sore at Paris. 

He had purchased moreover a handsome blue satin waist- 
coat, fancifully enough embroidered : this was indeed something 
the worse for the service it had done, but 't was clean scoured ; 



142 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

the gold had been touched up, and upon the whole was rather 
showy than otherwise ; and as the blue was not violent, it 
suited with the coat and breeches very well : he had squeezed 
out of the money, moreover, a new bag and a solitaire ; and 
had insisted with the frijpier upon a gold pair of garters to 
his breeches' knees. He had purchased muslin ruffles, bien 
brodees, with four livres of his own money, and a pair of white 
silk stockings for five more ; and, to top all, Nature had given 
him a handsome figure, without costing him a sous. 

He entered the room thus set off, with his hair dressed in 
the first style, and with a handsome bouquet in his breast ; in a 
word, there was that look of festivity in every thing about him, 
which at once put me in mind it was Sunday ; and, by com- 
bining both together, it instantly struck me, that the favour he 
wished to ask of me the night before, was to spend the day as 
every body in Paris spent it besides. I had scarce made the 
conjecture when La Fleur, with infinite humility, but with a 
look of trust, as if I should not refuse him, begged I would 
grant him the day, pour faire le galant vis-a-vis de se 
maitresse. 

Now it was the very thing I intended to do myself vis-a- 
vis Madame de R . I had retained the remise on purpose 

for it, and it would not have mortified my vanity to have had 
a servant so well dressed as La Fleur was, to have got up 
behind it : I never could have worse spared him. 

But we must feel, not argue in these embarrassments; the 
sons and daughters of service part with liberty, but not with 
nature, in their contracts ; they are flesh and blood, and have 
their little vanities and wishes in the midst of the house of 
bondage, as well as their taskmasters ; no doubt, they have set 
their self-denials at a price ; and their expectations are so 
unreasonable, that I would often disappoint them, but that 
their condition puts it so much in my power to do it. 

" Behold ! Behold, I am thy servant" — disarms me at once 
of the powers of a master. 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



143 



" Thou shalt go, La Fleur ! " said I. 

— " And what mistress, La Fleur," said I, " canst thou 
have picked up in so little a time at Paris ? " La Fleur laid 
his hand upon his breast, and said " 'twas a petite demoiselle, 

at Monsieur le Count de B 's." La Fleur had a heart 

made for society ; and, to speak the truth of him, let as few 
occasions slip him as his master ; so that somehow or other — 
but how, Heaven knows — he had connected himself with the 
demoiselle upon the landing of the staircase during the time 1 
was taken up with my passport ; and as there was time enough 
for me to win the Count to my interest, La Fleur had con- 
trived to make it do to win the maid to his. The family, it 
seems, was to be at Paris that day, and he had made a party 
with her, and two or three more of the Count's household, 
upon the boulevards. 

Happy people ! that once a week at least are sure to lay 
down all your cares together, and dance and sing and sport 
away the weights of grievance, which bow down the spirit of 
other nations to the earth. 




144 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



THE FRAGMENT. 



La Fleur had left me something to amuse myself with for the 
day more than I had bargained for, or could have entered 
either into his head or mine. 

He had brought the little print of butter upon a currant 
leaf: and as the morning was warm, and he had a good step 
to bring it, he had begged a sheet of waste paper to put 
betwixt the currant leaf and his hand. As that was plate 
sufficient, I bade him lay it upon the table as it was, and as 
I resolved to stay within all day, I ordered him to call upon 
the traiteur, to bespeak my dinner, and leave me to breakfast 
by myself. 

When I had finished the butter, I threw the currant leaf 
out of the window, and was going to do the same by the waste 
paper ; but stopping to read a line first, and that drawing me 
on to a second and third, I thought it better worth ; so I shut 
the window, and, drawing a chair up to it, I sat down to read 
it. 

It was in the old French of Rabelais' time ; and, for aught 
I know, might have been wrote by him : it was, moreover, 
in a Gothic letter, and that so faded and gone off by damps 
and length of time, it cost me infinite trouble to make any 
thing of it. I threw it down, and then wrote a letter to 
Eugenius ; then I took it up again, and embroiled my patience 
with it afresh ; and then, to cure that, I wrote a letter to 
Eliza. Still it kept hold of me ; and the difficulty of under- 
standing it increased but the desire. 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 145 

I got my dinner ; and after I had enlightened my mind 
with a bottle of Burgundy, I at it again ; and, after two or 
three hours poring upon it, with almost as deep attention as 
ever Gruter or Jacob Spon did upon a nonsensical inscription, 
I thought I made sense of it : but to make sure of it, the best 
way, I imagined, was to turn it into English, and see how 
it would look then : so I went on leisurely, as a trifling man 
does, sometimes writing a sentence, then taking a turn or two, 
and then looking how the world went, out of the window ; so 
that it was nine o'clock at night before I had done it. I then 
began and read it as follows : — 



THE FRAGMENT. 

PARIS. 

— Now, as the notary's wife disputed the point with the 
notary with too much heat, " I wish," said the notary (throw- 
ing down the parchment), " that there was another notary 
here, only to set down and attest all this." 

— "And what would you do then, monsieur?" said she, 
rising hastily up. The notary's wife was a little fume of a 
woman, and the notary thought it well to avoid a hurricane 
by a mild reply. " I would go," answered he, " to bed." 
" You may go to the devil," answered the notary's wife. 

Now, there happening to be but one bed in the house, 
the other two rooms being unfurnished, as is the custom at 
Paris, and the notary not caring to lie in the same bed with 
a woman who had but that moment sent him pell-mell to the 
devil, went forth with his hat and cane, and short cloak, the 
night being very windy, and walked out, ill at ease, towards 
the Pont-Neuf. 

T 



146 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



Of all the bridges that ever were built, the whole world 
who have passed over the Pont-Neuf must own that it is the 
noblest, the finest, the grandest, the lightest, the longest, the 
broadest, that ever conjoined land and land together upon the 
face of the terraqueous globe 

[By this, it seems as if the author of the fragment had not 
been a Frenchman.] 

The worst fault which divines and the doctors of the Sor- 
bonne can allege against it, is, that if there is but a capful of 
wind in or about Paris, 'tis more blasphemously " Sacre Dieu'd" 




there, than in any other aperture of the whole city ; and with 
reason good and cogent, messieurs, — for it comes against you 
without crying " Garde d'eau;" and with such unpremedit- 
able puffs, that, of the few who cross it with their hats on, not 
one in fifty but hazards two livres and a half, which is its full 
worth. 

The poor notary, just as he was passing by the sentry, in- 
stinctively clapped his cane to the side of it ; but, in raising it 
up, the point of his cane, catching hold of the loop of the sen- 
tinel's hat, hoisted it over the spikes of the balustrade, clear 
into the Seine. 

— " 'Tis an ill wind," said a boatman, who catched it, 
it which blows nobody any good." 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 147 

The sentry, being a Gascon, incontinently twirled up his 
whiskers, and levelled his arquebuse. 

Arquebuses, in those days, went off w T ith matches ; and an 
old woman's paper lantern at the end of the bridge happening 
to be blown out, she had borrowed the sentry's match to light 
it : — it gave a moment's time for the Gascon's blood to run 
cool, and turn the accident better to his advantage. " 'Tis an 
ill wind," said he, catching off the notary's castor, and legiti- 
mating the capture with the boatman's adage. 

The poor notary crossed the bridge, and passing along the 
Rue de Dauphine into the Faubourg of St. Germain, lamented 
himself as he walked along in this manner : — 

" Luckless man that I am!" said the notary, "to be the 
sport of hurricanes all my days ; to be born to have the storm 
of ill language levelled against me and my profession wherever 
I go ; to be forced into marriage by the thunder of the church 
to a tempest of a woman ; to be driven forth out of my house 
by domestic winds, and despoiled of my castor by pontine ones ! 
to be here, bareheaded, in a windy night, at the mercy of the 
ebbs and flows of accidents ! Where am I to lay my head ? 
Miserable man ! what wind in the two and thirty points of the 
whole compass can blow unto thee, as it does to the rest of thy 
fellow creatures, good?" 

As the notary was passing on by a dark passage, com- 
plaining in this sort, a voice called out to a girl, to bid her 
run for the next notary. Now the notary being the next, and 
availing himself of his situation, walked up the passage to the 
door, and passing through an old sort of a saloon, was ushered 
into a large chamber, dismantled of everything but a long mili- 
tary pike, a breastplate, a rusty old sword, and bandoleer, hung 
up equidistant, in four different places, against the wall. 

An old personage who had heretofore been a gentleman, 
and unless decay of fortune taints the blood along with it, was 
a gentleman at that time, lay supporting his head upon his 
hand in his bed ; a little table with a taper burning was set 



148 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



close beside it, and close by the table was placed a chair : — 
the notary sat him down in it ; and pulling out his ink-horn and 
a sheet or two of paper which he had in his pocket, he placed 
them before him, and dipping his pen in his ink, and leaning 
his breast over the table, he disposed everything to make the 
Gentleman's last will and testament. 




" Alas ! Monsieur le Notaire," said the gentleman, raising 
himself up a little, I have nothing to bequeath which will pay 
the expense of bequeathing, except the history of myself, 
which I could not die in peace, unless I left it as a legacy to 
the world : the profits arising out of it I bequeath to you for 
the pains of taking it from me; it is a story so uncommon, it 
must be read by all mankind; it will make the fortunes of 
your house." The notary dipped his pen into his ink-horn. 
" Almighty Director of every event in my life ! " said the old 
gentleman, looking up earnestly, and raising his hands towards 
heaven; "Thou, whose hand has led me on through such a 
labyrinth of strange passages down into this scene of desola- 



THROUGH 1'RANCE AND ITALY. 149 

tion, assist the decaying memory of an old, infirm, and broken- 
hearted man ; direct my tongue by the spirit of Thy eternal 
truth, that this stranger may set down nought but what is 
written in that Book, from whose records," said he, clasping 
his hands together, " I am to be condemned or acquitted ! " 
The notary held up the point of his pen betwixt the taper and 
his eye. — 

" It is a story, Monsieur le Notaire," said the gentleman, 
" which will rouse up every affection in nature ; it will kill 
the humane, and touch the heart of cruelty herself with pity." 

— The notary was inflamed with a desire to begin, and put 
his pen a third time into his ink-horn ; and the old gentleman, 
turning a little more towards the notary, began to dictate 
his story in these words : — 

— " And where is the rest of it, La Fleur," said I, as 
he just then entered the room. 



THE FRAGMENT, AND THE BOUQUET. 

PARIS. 

When La Fleur came close up to the table, and was made 
to comprehend what I wanted, he told me there were only 
two other sheets of it, which he had wrapped round the stalks 
of a bouquet to keep it together, which he had presented to 
the demoiselle upon the boulevards. " Then, prithee, La 

Fleur," said I, " step back to her to the Count de B 's 

hotel, and see if thou canst get it." " There is no doubt of 
it," said La Fleur ; and away he flew. 

In a very little time, the poor fellow came back quite out 
of breath, with deeper marks of disappointment in his looks 



150 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



than could arise from the simple irreparability of the frag- 
ment. Juste Ciel! in less than two minutes that the poor 
fellow had taken his last tender farewell of her, his faithless 
mistress had given his gage d 'amour to one of the Count's 
footmen ; the footman to a young sempstress ; and the semp- 
stress to a fiddler, — with my fragment at the end of it. Our 
misfortunes were involved together ; I gave a sigh, and La 
Fleur echoed it back again to my ear. 

— " How perfidious ! " cried La Fleur. " How unlucky!" 
said I. 

— "I should not have been mortified, monsieur," quoth 
La Fleur, " if she had lost it." " Nor I, La Fleur," said I, 
" had I found it." 

Whether I did or no, will be seen hereafter. 



THE ACT OF CHARITY 



PARIS. 



The man who either disdains or fears to walk up a dark 
entry, may be an excellent good man, and fit for a hundred 
things ; but he will not do to make a good Sentimental Tra- 
veller. I count little of the many things I see pass at broad 
noonday, in large and open streets. Nature is shy, and hates 
to act before spectators ; but in such an unobserved corner, 
you sometimes see a single short scene of hers, worth all the 
sentiments of a dozen French plays compounded together ; 
and yet they are absolutely fine : and whenever I have a more 
brilliant affair upon my hands than common, as they suit a 
preacher just as well as a hero, I generally make my sermon 
out of 'em : and for the text, " Cappadocia, Pontus, and 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 151 

Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia," is as good as any one in the 
Bible. 

There is a long dark passage issuing out from the Opera 
Comique into a narrow street ; 'tis trod by a few who humbly 
wait for a Jiacre,* or wish to get off quietly o' foot when the 
opera is done. At the end of it, towards the theatre, 'tis 
lighted by a small candle, the light of which is almost lost 
before you get half-way down ; but near the door, 't is more 
for ornament than use : you see it as a fixed star of the least 
magnitude ; it burns, but does little good to the world, that 
we know of. 

In returning along this passage, I discerned, as I ap- 
proached within five or six paces of the door, two ladies 
standing arm in arm, with their backs against the wall, waiting, 
as I imagined, for a Jiacre : as they were next the door, I 
thought they had a prior right ; so edged myself up within a 
yard or little more of them, and quietly took my stand. I 
was in black, and scarce seen. 

The lady next me was a tall lean figure of a woman, of 
about thirty-six ; the other of the same size and make, of 
about forty : there was no mark of wife or widow in any one 
part of either of them ; they seemed to be two upright vestal 
sisters, unsapped by caresses, unbroke in upon by tender 
salutations. I could have wished to have made them happy : 
their happiness was destined that night to come from another 
quarter. 

A low voice, with a good turn of expression, and sweet 
cadence at the end of it, begged for a twelve-sous piece be- 
twixt them, for the love of heaven. I thought it singular 
that a beggar should fix the quota of an alms, and that the 
sum should be twelve times as much as what is usually given 
in the dark. They both seemed astonished at it as much as 
myself. " Twelve sous ! " said one. " A twelve-sous piece !" 
said the other, and made no reply. 

* Hackney Coach. 



152 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



The poor man said, he knew not how to ask less of ladies 
of their rank ; and bowed down his head to the ground. 
" Pooh ! " said they, " we have no money." 
The beggar remained silent for a moment or two, and 
renewed his supplication. 

— " Do not, my fair young ladies," said he, " stop your 
good ears against me." " Upon my word, honest man ! " said 
the younger," we have no change." " Then, God bless you," 
said the poor man, " and multiply those joys which you can 
give to others without change ! " I observed the elder sister 
put her hand into her pocket. " I' 11 see, J ' said she, " if I have a 
sous." " A sous! — give twelve !" said the supplicant ; " Nature 
has been bountiful to you, be bountiful to a poor man." 

— "I would, friend, with all my heart," said the younger, 
"if I had it." 




THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 153 

" My fair charitable ! " said he, addressing himself to the 
elder ; " what is it but your goodness and humanity which 
makes your bright eyes so sweet, that they outshine the morn- 
ing, even in this dark passage ? and what was it which made 
the Marquess de Santerre and his brother say so much of you 
both, as they just passed by? " 

The two ladies seemed much affected ; and impulsively, 
at the same time, they both put their hands into their pocket, 
and each took out a twelve-sous piece. 

The contest betwixt them and the poor supplicant was no 
more ; it was continued betwixt themselves, which of the two 
should give the twelve-sous piece in charity ; and, to end the 
dispute, they both gave it together, and the man went away. 



THE RIDDLE EXPLAINED. 



PARIS. 



I stepped hastily after him: it was the very man whose 
success in asking charity of the women before the door of the 
hotel had so puzzled me : and I found at once his secret, or at 
least the basis of it : 't was flattery. 

Delicious essence! how refreshing art thou to Nature! 
how strongly are all its powers and all its weaknesses on thy 
side! how sweetly dost thou mix with the blood, and help it 
through the most difficult and tortuous passages to the heart! 

The poor man, as he was not straitened for time, had 
given it here in a larger dose : 't is certain he had a way of 
bringing it into a less form, for the many sudden cases he had 
to do with in the streets ; but how he contrived to correct, 
sweeten, concentre, and qualify it, I vex not my spirit with 
the enquiry ; it is enough, the beggar gained two twelve-sous 
pieces ; and they can best tell the rest, who have gained much 
greater matters by it. 

u 



154 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



PARIS. 

We get forwards in the world, not so much by doing services, 
as receiving them : you take a withering twig, and put it in the 
ground, and then you water it, because you have planted it. 

Monsieur le Count de B , merely because he had done 

me one kindness in the affair of my passport, would go on and 
do me another, the few days he was in Paris, in making me 
known to a few people of rank ; and they were to present me 
to others, and so on. 

I had got master of my secret just in time to turn these 
honours to some little account ; otherwise, as is commonly the 
case, I should have dined or supped a single time or two 
round ; and then, by translating French looks and attitudes 
into plain English, I should presently have seen, that I had 
gold out of the convert* of some more entertaining guest; and 
in course, should have resigned all my places, one after 
another, merely upon the principle that I could not keep 
them. As it was, things did not go much amiss. 

I had the honour of being introduced to the old Marquess 

de B= : in days of yore, he had signalised himself by some 

small feats of chivalry in the Cour d' Amour, and had dressed 
himself out to the idea of tilts and tournaments ever since. 

The Marquess de B wished to have it thought the affair 

was somewhere else than in his brain. " He could like to 
take a trip to England," and asked much of the English ladies. 
" Stay where you are, I beseech you, Monsieur le Marquess," 
said I ; " les Messieurs Anglois can scarce get a kind look from 
them as it is." The Marquess invited me to supper. 



Plate, napkin, knife, fork, and spoon. 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 155 

Monsieur P , the farmer-general, was just as inqui- 
sitive about our taxes. " They were very considerable, he 
heard." " If we knew but how to collect them," said I, 
making him a low bow. 

I could never have been invited to Monsieur P 's con- 
certs upon any other terms. 

I had been misrepresented to Madame de Q , as an 

esprit. Madame de Q, was an esprit herself: she burned 

with impatience to see me, and hear me talk. I had not taken 
my seat, before I saw she did not care a sous whether I had any 
wit or no : I was let in to be convinced she had. I call Heaven 
to witness I never once opened the door of my lips. 

Madame de Y vowed to every creature she met, 

" She had never had a more improving conversation with a 
man in her life." 

There are three epochas in the empire of a French woman : 
she is coquette, then Deist, then devotee: the empire during 
these is never lost, she only changes her subjects : when thirty- 
five years and more have unpeopled her dominions of the slaves 
of love, she repeoples it with infidelity, and then with slaves 
of the church. 

Madame de V was vibrating betwixt the first of those 

epochas; the colour of the rose was fast fading away: she 
ought to have been a Deist five years before the time I had 
the honour to pay my first visit. 

She placed me upon the same sofa with her, for the sake of 
disputing the point of religion more closely. In short, 

Madame de Y told me she believed nothing. I told 

Madame de Y it might be her principle; but I was sure 

it could not be her interest to level the outworks, without 
which I could not conceive how such a citadel as hers could 
be defended; that there was not a more dangerous thing in 
the world than for a beauty to be a Deist ; that it was a debt 
I owed my creed not to conceal it from her ; that I had not 
been five minutes sat upon the sofa beside her, but I had 



156 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

begun to form designs ; and what is it, but the sentiments of 
religion, and the persuasion they had excited in her breast, 
which could have checked them as they rose up ? 

"We are not adamant," said I, taking hold of her hand; 
" and there is need of all restraints, till age, in her own time, 
steals in and lays them on us. But, my dear lady," said I, 
kissing her hand; " 'tis too — too soon." 




I declare I had the credit all over Paris of unperverting 

Madame de V . She affirmed to Monsieur D and 

the Abbe M , that in one half hour I had said more for 

revealed religion, than all their Encyclopaedia had said against 

it. I was listed directly into Madame de V- 's coterie; 

and she put off the epocha of Deism for two years. 

I remember it was in this coterie, in the middle of a dis- 
course, in which I was shewing the necessity of a First Cause, 
when the young Count de Faineant took me by the hand to 
the farthest corner of the room, to tell me my solitaire was 
pinned too straight about my neck. " It should be plus badi- 
nant" said the Count, looking down upon his own; "but a 
word, Monsieur Yorick, to the wise — " 

" And from the wise, Monsieur le Count," replied I, 
making him a bow, " is enough." 

The Count de Faineant embraced me with more ardour 
than ever I was embraced by mortal man. 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 



157 



For three weeks together, 1 was of every man's opinion I 
met. " Pardi ! ce Monsieur YoricJc a autant d' esprit que 
nous autres." " II raisonne bien" said another. " C est un 
bon enfant, said a third. And at this price I could have eaten 
and drank and been merry all the days of my life at Paris ; 
but 'twas a dishonest reckoning; I grew ashamed of it. It 
was the gain of a slave ; every sentiment of honour revolted 
against it ; the higher I got, the more was I forced upon my 
beggarly system ; the better the coterie, the more children of 
Art : I languished for those of Nature ; and one night, after a 
most vile prostitution of myself to half a dozen different people, 
I grew sick ; went to bed ; ordered La Fleur to get me horses 
in the morning to set out for Italy. 






A2-. vS* - 







158 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 




MARIA. 



MOULINES. 



I never felt what the distress of plenty was in any one shape 
till now; to travel it through the Bourbonnois, the sweetest 
part of France, in the heyday of the vintage, when Nature is 
pouring her abundance into every one's lap, and every eye is 
lifted up ; a journey, through each step of which music beats 
time to labour, and all her children are rejoicing as they carry 
in their clusters : to pass through this with my affections 
flying out, and kindling at every group before me ; and every 
one of them was pregnant with adventures ■ 

Just Heaven ! it would fill up twenty volumes ; and, alas ! 
I have but a few small pages left of this to crowd it into ; and 
half of these must be taken up with the poor Maria, my friend 
Mr. Shandy met with near Moulines. 

The story he had told me of that disordered maid affected 
me not a little in the reading ; but when I got within the neigh- 
bourhood where she lived, it returned so strong into my mind, 
that I could not resist an impulse which prompted me to go 
half a league out of the road, to the village where her parents 
dwelt, to enquire after her. 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 159 

' T is going, I own, like the Knight of the Woeful Coun- 
tenance, in quest of melancholy adventures ; but I know not 
how it is, but I am never so perfectly conscious of the exist- 
ence of a soul within me, as when I am entangled in them. 

The old mother came to the door ; her looks told me the 
story before she opened her mouth. " She had lost her hus- 
band; he had died," she said, "of anguish, for the loss of 
Maria's senses, about a month before. She had feared at first," 
she added, " that it would have plundered her poor girl of 
what little understanding was left ; but, on the contrary, it had 
brought her more to herself; still she could not rest. Her 
poor daughter, 1 ' she said, crying, "was wandering somewhere 
about the road " 

Why does my pulse beat languid as I write this? and what 
made La Fleur, whose heart seemed only to be turned to joy, 
to pass the back of his hand twice across his eyes, as the 
woman stood and told it I beckoned to the postillion to turn 
back into the road. 

"When we had got within half a league of Moulines, at a 
little opening in the road leading to a thicket, I discovered 
poor Maria sitting under a poplar. She was sitting with her 
elbow in her lap, and her head leaning on one side within her 
hand : a small brook ran at the foot of the tree. 

I bid the postilion go on with the chaise to Moulines, and La 
Fleur to bespeak my supper; and that I would walk after him. 

She was dressed in white, and much as my friend 
described her, except that her hair hung loose, which before 
was twisted within a silk net. She had superadded likewise to 
her jacket, a pale green riband, which fell across her shoulder 
to the waist ; at the end of which hung her pipe. Her goat 
had been as faithless as her lover ; and she had got a little dog 
in lieu of him, which she had kept tied by a string to her 
girdle : as I looked at her dog, she drew him towards her with 
the string. " Thou shalt not leave me, Sylvio," said she. I 
looked in Maria's eyes, and saw she was thinking more of her 



160 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

father than of her lover, or her little goat ; for, as she uttered 
them, the tears trickled down her cheeks. 

I sat down close by her; and Maria let me wipe them 
away as they fell, with my handkerchief. I then steeped it in 
my own, and then in hers, and then in mine, and then I wiped 
hers again ; and, as I did it, I felt such undescribable emo- 
tions within me, as I am sure could not be accounted for from 
any combinations of matter and motion. 

I am positive I have a soul; nor can all the books with 
which materialists have pestered the world ever convince me 
to the contrary. 



MARIA. 

When Maria had come a little to herself, I asked her if she 
remembered a pale thin person of a man who had sat down 
betwixt her and her goat about two years before? She said 
she was unsettled much at that time, but remembered it upon 
two accounts ; that, ill as she was, she saw the person pitied 
her ; and next, that her goat had stolen his handkerchief, and 
she had beat him for the theft. " She had washed it," she 
said, " in the brook, and kept it ever since in her pocket to 
restore it to him in case she should ever see him again, which," 
she added, " he had half promised her." As she told me this, 
she took the handkerchief out of her pocket to let me see it ; 
she had folded it up neatly in a couple of vine-leaves, tied 
round with a tendril ; on opening it, I saw an S. marked in 
one of the corners. 

She had since that, she told me, strayed as far as Rome, 
and walked round St. Peter's once, and returned back; that 
she found her way alone across the Appenines, had travelled 
over all Lombardy without money, and through the flinty 
roads of Savoy without shoes : how she had borne it, and how 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 161 

she had got supported, she could not tell ; " But, ' God tempers 
the wind,' " said Maria, " ' to the shorn lamb.' " 

"Shorn, indeed, and to the quick," said I? "and wast 
thou in my own land, where I have a cottage, I would take 
thee to it, and shelter thee: thou shouldst eat of my own 
bread, and drink of my own cup ; I would be kind to thy 
Sylvio ; in all thy weaknesses and wanderings, I would seek 
after thee and bring thee back: when the sun went down, I 
would say my prayers ; and when I had done, thou shouldst 
play thy evening song upon thy pipe, nor would the incense of 
my sacrifice be worse accepted for entering heaven along with 
that of a broken heart !" 

Nature melted within me, as I uttered this ; and Maria 
observing, as I took out my handkerchief, that it was steeped 
too much already to be of use, would needs go wash it in the 
stream. " And where will you dry it, Maria?" said I. " I '11 
dry it in my bosom," said she ; " 'twill do me good." 

" And is your heart still so warm, Maria ?" said I. 

I touched upon the string on which hung all her sorrows : 
she looked with wistful disorder for some time in my face ; 
and then, without saying anything, took her pipe and played 
her service to the Virgin. The string I had touched ceased 
to vibrate ; in a moment or two, Maria returned to herself, let 
her pipe fall, and rose up. 

And where are you going, Maria V said I. She said, " To 
Moulines." " Let us go," said I, " together." Maria put her 
arm within mine, and lengthening the string to let the dog 
follow, in that order we entered Moulines. 




162 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 



MARIA. 



MOULINES. 



Though I hate salutations and greetings in the market-place, 
yet, when we got into the middle of this, I stopped to take my 
last look, and last farewell of Maria. 

Maria, though not tall, was nevertheless of the first order 
of fine forms : affliction had touched her looks with something 
that was scarce earthly ; still she was feminine ; and so much 
was there about her of all that the heart wishes, or the eye 
looks for in woman, that could the traces be ever worn out of 
her brain, and those of Eliza out of mine, she should not only 
eat of my bread and drink of my cup, but Maria should lie in 
my bosom, and be unto me as a daughter. 

Adieu, poor luckless maiden ! Imbibe the oil and wine 
which the compassion of a stranger, as he journeyeth on his 
way, now pours into thy wounds ; the Being, who has twice 
bruised thee, can only bind them up for ever. 



THE BOURBONNOIS. 

There was nothing from which I had painted out for myself 
so joyous a riot of the affections, as in this journey in the 
vintage, through this part of France ; but pressing through 
this gate of sorrow to it, my sufferings have totally unfitted me ; 
in every scene of festivity, I saw Maria in the back ground of 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY, 163 

the piece, sitting pensive under her poplar; and I had got 
almost to Lyons before I was able to cast a shade across her. 

— " Dear Sensibility! source inexhausted of all that 's pre- 
cious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows ! thou chainest thy 
martyr down upon his bed of straw, and 't is thou who liftest 
him up to Heaven. Eternal fountain of our feelings! 'tis 
here I trace thee ; and this is thy ' divinity which stirs within 
me ;' not that, in some sad and sickening moments, 'my soul 
shrinks back upon herself, and startles at destruction!' — mere 
pomp of words! — but that I feel some generous joys and 
generous cares beyond myself ; all comes from thee, great, 
great Sensorium of the world! which vibrates, if a hair of 
our heads but fallso upon the ground, in the remotest 
desert of thy creation. Touched with thee, Eugenius draws 
my curtain when I languish, hears my tale of symptoms, and 
blames the weather for the disorder of his nerves. Thou 
givest a portion of it sometimes to the roughest peasant who 
traverses the bleakest mountains ; he finds the lacerated lamb 
of another's flock. This moment I behold him leaning with 
his head against his crook, with piteous inclination looking 
down upon it ! Oh ! had I come one moment sooner ! it 
bleeds to death! his gentle heart bleeds with it !" 

"Peace to thee, generous swain! I see thou walkest off 
with anguish, but thy joys shall balance it ; for, happy is thy 
cottage, and happy is the sharer of it, and happy are the lambs 
which sport about you." 



104 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 




THE SUPPER. 



A shoe coming loose from the fore foot of the thill-horse, at 
the beginning of the ascent of Mount Taurira, the postillion dis- 
mounted, twisted the shoe off, and put it in his pocket ; as the 
ascent was of five or six miles, and that horse our main de- 
pendance, I made a point of having the shoe fastened on again 
as well as we could ; but the postillion had thrown away the 
nails, and the hammer in the chaise box being of no great use 
without them, I submitted to go on. 

He had not mounted half a mile higher, when, coming to a 
flinty piece of road, the poor devil lost a second shoe, and from 
off his other fore foot; I then got out of the chaise in good 
earnest ; and seeing a house about a quarter of a mile to the 
left hand, with a great deal to do, I prevailed upon the postillion 
to turn up to it. The look of the house, and of everything 
about it, as we drew nearer, soon reconciled me to the disaster. 
It was a little farm-house, surrounded with about twenty acres 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 165 

of vineyard, about as much corn, and close to the house, on 
one side, was a potagerie of an acre and a half, full of every- 
thing which could make plenty in a French peasant's house ; 
and, on the other side, was a little wood, which furnished 
wherewithal to dress it. It was about eight in the evening 
when I got to the house, so I left the postillion to manage his 
point as he could ; and, for mine, I walked directly into the 
house. 

The family consisted of an old grey-headed man and his 
wife, with five or six sons and sons-in-law, and their several 
wives, and a joyous genealogy out of them. 

They were all sitting down together to their lentil-soup ; 
a large wheaten loaf was in the middle of the table ; and a 
flagon of wine at each end of it promised joy through the 
stages of the repast ; 't was a feast of love. 

The old man rose up to meet me, and with a respectful 
cordiality would have me sit down at the table ; my heart was 
set down the moment I entered the room ; so I sat down at 
once like a son of the family ; and to invest myself in the cha- 
racter as speedily as I could, I instantly borrowed the old man's 
knife, and taking up the loaf, cut myself a hearty luncheon : 
and, as I did it, I saw a testimony, in every eye, not only of 
an honest welcome, but of a welcome mixed with thanks that 
I had not seemed to doubt it. 

"Was it this? or tell me, Nature, what else it was that 
made this morsel so sweet ; and to what magic I owe it, that 
the draught I took of their flagon was so delicious with it, that 
they remain upon my palate to tins hour. 

If the supper was to my taste, the grace which followed it 
was much more so. 



166 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 




THE GRACE. 



W»en supper was over, the old man gave a knock upon the 
table with the haft of his knife, to bid them prepare for the 
dance : the moment the signal was given, the women and girls 
ran altogether into a back apartment to tie up their hair, and 
the young men to the door to wash their faces, and change their 
sabots; and in three minutes every soul was ready upon a little 
esplanade before the house to begin. The old man and his 
wife came out last, and placing me betwixt them, sat down 
upon a sofa of turf by the door. 

The old man had some fifty years ago been no mean 
performer upon the vielle ; and at the age he was then of, 
touched it well enough for the purpose. His wife sung now 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 167 

and then a little to the tune, then intermitted, and joined her 
old man again, as their children and grandchildren danced 
before them. 

It was not till the middle of the second dance, when, for 
some pauses in the movements wherein they all seemed to look 
up, I fancied I could distinguish an elevation of spirit different 
from that which is the cause or the effect of simple jolity. In 
a word, I thought I beheld Religion mixing in the dance : 
but, as I had never seen her so engaged, I should have looked 
upon it now as one of the illusions of an imagination which is 
eternally misleading me, had not the old man, as soon as the 
dance ended, said, "that this was their constant way; and 
that all his life long he had made it a rule, after supper was 
over, to call out his family to dance and rejoice ; believing," 
he said, "that a cheerful and contented mind was the best sort 
of thanks to Heaven that an illiterate peasant could pay — " 

" Or a learned prelate either," said I. 



THE CASE OF DELICACY. 



When you have gained the top of Mount Taurira, you run 
presently down to Lyons : adieu, then, to all rapid movements ! 
Tis a journey of caution ; and it fares better with sentiments, 
not to be in a hurry with them ; so I contracted with a voiturin 
to take his time with a couple of mules, and convey me in my 
own chaise safe to Turin, through Savoy. 

Poor, patient, quiet honest people ! fear not : your poverty, 
the treasury of your simple virtues, will not be envied you by 
the world, nor will your valleys be invaded by it. Nature ! in 
the midst of thy disorders, thou art still friendly to the scan- 
tiness thou hast created : with all thy great works about thee, 



168 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

little hast thou left to give, either to the scythe or to the sickle, 
but to that little thou grantest safety and protection ; and sweet 
are the dwellings which stand so sheltered. 

Let the wayworn traveller vent his complaints upon the 
sudden turns and dangers of your roads — your rocks — your 
precipices ; the difficulties of getting up — the horrors of 
getting down ; mountains impracticable ; and cataracts which 
roll down great stones from their summits, and block up his 
road. The peasants had been all day at work in removing a 
fragment of this kind between St. Michael and Madane ; and, 
by the time my voiturin got to the place, it wanted full two 
hours of completing before a passage could any how be gained : 
there was nothing but to wait with patience, 'twas a wet and 
tempestuous night : so that by the delay, and that together, 
the voiturin found himself obliged to take up five miles short 
of his stage at a little decent kind of an inn by the road side. 

I forthwith took possession of my bed-chamber, got a good 
fire, ordered supper ; and was thanking Heaven it was no 
worse, when a voiture arrived with a lady in it, and her servant 
maid. 

As there was no other bed-chamber in the house, the 
hostess, without much nicety, led them into mine, telling them, 
as she ushered them in, that there was nobody in it but an 
English gentleman ; that there were two good beds in it, 
and a closet within the room which held another. The accent 
in which she spoke of this third bed, did not say much for it ; 
however, she said that there were three beds and but three 
people, and she durst say, the gentleman would do anything 
to accommodate matters. I left not the lady a moment to 
make a conjecture about it, so instantly made a declaration 
that I would do anything in my power. 

As this did not amount to an absolute surrender of my 
bed-chamber, I still felt myself so much the proprietor, as to 
have a right to do the honours of it ; so I desired the lady to 
sit down, pressed her into the warmest seat, called for more 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 169 

wood, desired the hostess to enlarge the plan of the supper, 
and to favour us with the very best wine. 

The lady had scarce warmed herself five minutes at the fire, 
before she began to turn her head back, and to give a look 
at the beds ; and the oftener she cast her eyes that way, the 
more they returned perplexed ; I felt for her, and for myself : 
for in a few minutes, what by her looks, and the case itself, I 
found myself as much embarrassed as it was possible the lady 
could be herself. 

That the beds we were to lie in were in one and the same 
room, was enough simply by itself to have excited all this ; but 
the position of them (for they stood parallel, and so very close 
to each other as only to allow space for a small wicker chair 
betwixt them) rendered the affair still more oppressive to us ; 
they were fixed up moreover near the fire ; and the projection 
of the chimney on one side, and a large beam which crossed 
the room on the other, formed a kind of recess for them that 
was no way favourable to the nicety of our sensations : if any- 
thing could have added to it, it was that the two beds were 
both of them so very small, as to cut us off from every idea of 
the lady and the maid lying together, which in either of them, 
could it have been feasible, my lying beside them, though a 
thing not to be wished, yet there was nothing in it so terrible 
which the imagination might not have passed over without 
torment. 

As for the little room within, it offered little or no con- 
solation to us : 'twas a damp, cold closet, with a half-disman- 
tled window-shutter, and with a window which had neither 
glass nor oil-paper in it to keep out the tempest of the night. 
I did not endeavour to stifle my cough when the lady gave a 
peep into it ; so it reduced the case in course to this alter- 
native — That the lady should sacrifice her health to her 
feelings, and take up with the closet herself, and abandon the 
bed next mine to her maid, or that the girl should take the 
closet, &c. 

w 



170 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

The lady was a Piedmontese of about thirty, with a glow 
of health in her cheeks. The maid was a Lyonoise of twenty, 
and as brisk and lively a French girl as ever moved. There 
were difficulties every way, and the obstacle of the stone in the 
road, which brought us into the distress, great as it appeared 
whilst the peasants were removing it, was but a pebble to what 
lay in our way now. I have only to add, that it did not lessen 
the weight which hung upon our spirits, that we were both too 
delicate to communicate what we felt to each other upon the 
occasion. 

We sat down to supper ; and, had we not had more 
generous wine to it than a little inn _ in Savoy could have 
furnished, our tongues had been tied up, till Necessity herself 
had set them at liberty ; but the lady, having a few bottles of 
Burgundy in her voiture, sent down her jille de chambre for a 
couple of them ; so that by the time supper was over, and we 
were left alone, we felt ourselves inspired with a strength of 
mind sufficient to talk, at least, without reserve upon our 
situation. We turned it every way, and debated and con- 
sidered it in all kinds of lights in the course of a two hours' 
negociation ; at the end of which, the articles were settled 
finally betwixt us, and stipulated for in form and manner of a 
treaty of peace, and I believe with as much religion and good 
faith on both sides, as in any treaty which has yet had the 
honour of being handed down to posterity. 

They were as follow : — 

Firstly. As the right of the bed-chamber is in Monsieur, 
and he thinking the bed next to the fire to be the warmest, 
he insists upon the concession on the lady's side of taking up 
with it. 

Granted on the part of Madame ; with a proviso, that as 
the curtains of that bed are of a flimsy transparent cotton, and 
appear likewise too scanty to draw close, that the jille de 
chambre shall fasten up the opening, either by corking pins, 



THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. 171 

or needle and thread, in such manner as shall be deemed a 
sufficient barrier on the side of Monsieur. 

Secondly. It is required on the part of Madame, that 
Monsieur shall lie the whole night through in his robe de 
chambre. 

Rejected : inasmuch as Monsieur is not worth a robe de 
chambre ; he having nothing in his portmanteau but six shirts 
and a black silk pair of breeches. 

The mentioning the silk pair of breeches made an en- 
tire change of the article, for the breeches were accepted 
as an equivalent for the robe de chambre ; and so it was 
stipulated and agreed upon, that I should lie in my black silk 
breeches all night. 

Thirdly. It was insisted upon and stipulated for by the 
lady, that after Monsieur was got to bed, and the candle and 
fire extinguished, that Monsieur should not speak one single 
word the whole night. 

Granted, provided Monsieur's saying his prayers might not 
be deemed an infraction of the treaty. 

There was but one point forgot in this treaty, and that was 
the manner in which the lady and myself should be obliged to 
undress and get to bed ; there was but one way of doing it, 
and that I leave to the reader to devise ; protesting, as I do it, 
that if it is not the most delicate in nature, 'tis the fault of his 
own imagination, against which this is not my first complaint. 

Now, when we were got to bed, whether it was the novelty 
of the situation, or what it was, I know not ; but so it was, I 
could not shut my eyes : I tried this side, and that, and turned 
and turned again, till a full hour after midnight, when Nature 
and Patience both wearing out, " O my God ! " said I. 

— " You have broke the treaty, Monsieur," said the lady, 
who had no more slept than myself. I begged a thousand 
pardons, but insisted it was no more than an ejaculation. She 
maintained 'twas an entire infraction of the treaty. I main- 
tained it was provided for in the clause of the third article. 



172 



A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY, &c. 



The lady would by no means give up her point, though 
she weakened her barrier by it ; for, in the warmth of the 
dispute, I could hear two or three corking pins fall out of the 
curtain to the ground. 

" Upon my word and honour, Madame," said I, stretching 
my arm out of bed by way of asseveration, — 

(I was going to have added, that I would not have tres- 
passed against the remotest idea of decorum for the world) — 

But fhejille de chambre hearing there were words between 
us, and fearing that hostilities would ensue in course, had crept 
silently out of her closet ; and it being totally dark, had stolen 
so close to our beds, that she had got herself into the narrow 
passage which separated them, and had advanced so far up as 
to be in a line betwixt her mistress and me : — 

So that when I stretched out my hand, I caught hold of the 
fille de chambre 's 




'-^u THE END 



